Taken for Granted
by Indelible Evidence
Summary: Jane wants love back in her life, but some indiscretions aren't so easily forgotten, or forgiven. Kurt realises just how unbalanced their marriage is, and refuses to take Jane back. Can she convince him she loves him just as much as he's always loved her? Episode tag to 3x12, dealing with the (spoiler alert!) canon adultery committed by Jane while she was on the run.
1. Over

**Author's Note** : Written for lurkingwhump - and here be angst! I promise to give them a happy ending, but for now things are very, very unhappy.

I should probably note that inwhatlifetime on Tumblr has written a fic that's very similar, but I have been planning to write a temporary Jeller breakup based on the Clem incident for a while, so I forged ahead. You should go read theirs as well, because it's great. :) I would post a link to it, but we all know what this website thinks about links...

* * *

Kurt stared into his glass of Scotch, knowing he should just go to bed. But all that awaited him there was a long, lonely night with his thoughts, and he couldn't stand to move just yet.

The last couple of nights had been pure hell. Kurt had spent them lying in bed, inhaling Jane's scent, still on the bed linen, and torturing himself with thoughts of her with Clem Hahn. How many times had she slept with him? How serious had she felt about him? They'd worked over a dozen jobs together during a six-month period—hadn't she thought to mention to the guy that she was married? Or maybe she had, and Hahn hadn't cared. But he seemed like a decent guy, as much as it pissed Kurt off to admit it.

Since she'd first come into his life, every time he had a quiet moment to think, his thoughts always gravitated towards Jane. During the bad times, that was more of a curse than a blessing. God knew he'd spent hours obsessing over her while she'd been in the black site, wondering why she'd lied to him about being Taylor Shaw. When she'd gone on the run, he'd spent unhealthy amounts of time worrying about her—whether she was safe, whether he'd ever see her again. But this? It was so much worse.

His mind was filled with images of Jane kissing Hahn. Of her stripping down for him, sucking his cock, letting him go down on her. The idea of her orgasming with another man's cock in her made Kurt want to tear his brain out of his skull.

He didn't know if he was more angry or hurt. While they'd been working together to save Avery, he'd mostly just been numb, maybe a little in denial, but when it was all over—Avery safe, everyone back in New York—he'd come home and stood in the kitchen, staring at Jane's wedding ring, still lying on the counter where she'd left it. He'd wanted to yell, trash the room, express the anger that seethed inside him—but as always, the memories of his father drunkenly smashing up their family home reined him in. Instead, he'd gone into the living room, lowered himself onto the couch, gazed at the floor where he and Jane had consummated their reunion, and begun to cry.

Last night, he'd watched their wedding DVD again, turning it off well before Roman made his improvised cameo. He'd rewound the part where they'd said their vows time after time, looking for any trace of insincerity in Jane's face as she promised to forsake all others until death parted them. There wasn't a trace of doubt or duplicity in her face on that video, nothing he'd been too blinded by love to see on their wedding day.

Where had everything gone so wrong? The way he felt about Jane was powerful, his protective instinct strong and his love even stronger. Was it too much for her to cope with? Was that why she'd run at the first sign of trouble, rejecting his help to go it alone for eighteen months? Had she found Hahn easier to be with, more laid back, more compatible with her? Better in bed?

One of the first things she'd said to him when she'd come back was, "You're still wearing your ring." She'd sounded surprised. Had she honestly thought that leaving hers behind meant it was over? Hadn't she realised that he'd never let her go without a fight?

The Jane he'd brought back from Nepal had been the same, yet in some ways, almost a stranger. And she'd told him parts of herself had 'woken up again' on her travels, like that wasn't an idea that would cut him to the bone, that she needed to be away from him before she could feel fully alive.

Sure, he'd made a stupid mistake not telling her immediately about what had happened in Berlin. But it hadn't been just to protect himself from her ire and recriminations. It had been to protect _her_ from being hurt more by her past. No matter how wrong he'd been, his intentions had been good.

If he'd known she'd been fucking around on him in Europe, maybe he would have told her sooner.

How could they fix this? Was their relationship shattered beyond all repair?

Someone knocked on the door, and Kurt frowned, wondering if he could get away with ignoring it. But at the familiar sound of the key in the lock that came right after, he knew it was Jane. Kurt tensed, his pulse leaping right before his heart sank. He didn't know what to do about their relationship yet. He wanted to see his wife, but at the same time, he wished she'd stayed away a while longer.

Maybe she'd just come to pick up some more clothes, and then she'd head out again.

He stood up as Jane dropped her bag on the floor and turned to face him. Leaned against the door jamb between the study and the living room, unsure what to say. "Hey."

"I'm not letting Roman win," she said, her face determined.

He remained where he was, unsure what she meant. "What happened? Everything all right?" Had Roman made some new move they needed to counteract? He needed details.

Jane approached him a little hesitantly. "No. And it might not be for a while." She sighed. "Look, I know you have a history of being let down by the people you love. Your father. Your old partner. Me."

 _At least she's admitting she let me down._ That was a good start. But where was she going with this?

"But knowing why you lied about Avery doesn't make me feel any less betrayed. And that hurt may never go away."

An apology came to his lips, but he bit it back. He'd apologised a million times already, and it hadn't made any difference.

Jane watched him sadly. "But all of this has just made me feel so lonely. Afraid to trust the people I should believe in the most. You, and Avery. And that is exactly what Roman wants."

Kurt was afraid to breathe, afraid to hope, even as he slowly crossed the remainder of the space between them. Was she coming back to him? Was that what she meant by not letting Roman win?

"I'm not gonna give it to him. Because I want to trust Avery. I want to work things out with you. I want love back in my life."

Kurt stared at her, his soul torn in two. Half of him wanted to pull her into his arms, welcome her home, promise he'd never, ever screw up again if she'd just stay with him, forgive him.

The other half was frozen with disbelief. She hadn't apologised to him for cheating on him. She hadn't begged for _his_ forgiveness for telling him he should have died with Avery. She wasn't making any admission of wrongdoing at all, and making it sound like it was a foregone conclusion that he'd take her back.

"Kurt?" Jane was frowning at him, as though she'd expected him to have popped open the champagne by now.

 _This is too broken to fix. Too one-sided._

 _It's over._

* * *

Kurt wasn't saying anything. She'd expected him to be relieved, after all the times he'd begged for her forgiveness, but now he was almost unnaturally still, just staring at her. Then his shoulders dropped a little, and he rubbed a weary hand across his face.

Jane's stomach flipped over. What was going on with him?

"I don't think I can do this, Jane."

She realised she'd forgotten to breathe and made herself take a deep breath. "I don't understand."

He drained the glass of Scotch he was holding in one go, then moved past her to rinse out the glass. "That's the problem. You really don't, do you?"

A distant, but steadily approaching sense of panic registered on the edges of her senses. "Kurt, please, talk to me. You're saying I can't come home?"

He leaned against the kitchen worktop, his arms crossed in front of him. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying. This relationship…it isn't gonna work. Maybe it was never meant to."

"But I love you," she almost whispered, too stunned to cry. If she'd thought it had hurt to hear he'd killed Avery—or thought he had—it was nothing compared to this. "And you love me, I know you do."

He was silent, his posture somehow both defensive and defeated. The tears in his eyes gave her hope that she could change his mind, but the way his jaw was clenched worried her.

"Is this because of Clem?" she asked, desperately trying to get him to open up about what was going on in his head. She hadn't seen him this closed off to her since right after the black site, around the time when he'd told Zapata he couldn't even stand to be in the same room as her.

"That's a big part of it, yeah."

"After what you did, you're holding that against me?" It felt safer to argue with him than to collapse in a heap on the floor. She harnessed her anger about his deception and used it as fuel to keep her standing upright. "You hardly have the moral high ground right now, so I—"

"This isn't about what I did, Jane. It's about what you did. I've apologised more times than I can count for keeping what happened with Avery from you. You left because of it. If you still feel so strongly about it, why are you trying to come back? Because you don't want to let Roman win?"

Jane flinched at the edge to his tone as he quoted her words back at her. "Because I love you. Because I don't want this to tear us apart."

"You worked with Clem Hahn for six months doing K and R jobs, right? How many times did you sleep with him? Was it serious?" He radiated tension and hurt, but his words were quiet and even.

"Just one night! And I felt so bad about it that I left for Nepal the next day. That was the last time I saw him before he came to New York this week, I swear."

"You felt bad about it? I haven't seen any evidence of that." His voice shook as he said, "Do you have any idea what it's like for me to know that you fucked someone else? Every time I think about it, I just…"

She realised his hands were balled into fists. She'd known she'd hurt him, maybe as badly as he'd hurt her, but she hadn't realised how angry he was until now. "Kurt—"

"Just stop, Jane. I'm not done."

Jane fell silent, her heart pounding. Was she about to lose the man she loved over one stupid decision, one that she'd made out of loneliness while she'd been on the run?

"You left me in the middle of the night without saying goodbye or giving me the choice to come with you, and I forgave you. You realised I'd spent all of our savings trying to find you, and you said nothing about the giant stack of cash you had hidden in the air vent, and I forgave you. You told me parts of you only started to wake up again after you left Colorado, and hearing that tore me apart. But I forgave you, Jane, because I love you so damn much."

Jane closed her eyes, wishing she could go back and change things. The situation with the bounty hunters hadn't been her fault, but the way she'd handled it hadn't been great, in retrospect. She'd screwed up, and he'd gone through hell. That he'd forgiven her at all was a miracle.

"The way I kept what happened with Avery from you was stupid, I admit that. And I will feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. But I was played, Jane. By Roman, and by Dedrik, and by Avery. I was set up, and my only mistake was to try to spare us both more hurt, when I thought she was already dead. I did what I did to protect you, and our relationship, after you told me that you were done with your past, because all you ever found was pain."

She'd forgotten she'd said that. Shame began to creep over her at some of the things she'd said to him. She'd been unfair to tell him he should have died with Avery.

"But you can't compare not telling you about Avery to what you did. What happened in Berlin was an accident. But you? You stood in front of another man, and you made the decision to break your marriage vows. Sure, you took off your ring when you left, but you _know me_ , Jane. You knew I could never accept that it was over without talking to you first. We were happy before those bounty hunters crashed in on us that night. Or was I wrong about that?"

"No!" she said, taking a step forward. She wanted to cup his face in her hands and tell him how happy she'd been with him, but the hard expression on his face made it clear he wouldn't welcome any contact. "Those first few months of our marriage were so wonderful, Kurt. I didn't want to leave you."

"But you did want to cheat."

"I'd been on the run for over a year. It didn't look like I'd ever get the bounty off my head. I didn't think I could ever come back to you, and when he kissed me, I was just so lonely, I—"

"Don't." Kurt's voice was low and dangerous. "I don't want to hear about how lonely you were. I offered to come with you. I know you were trying to make sure I didn't miss Bethany's first few years to go on the run with you, but that wasn't your choice to make. You didn't have to be lonely, Jane."

"But I—"

He shook his head fiercely. "Do you have any idea how many women hit on me while you were away? I travelled the world searching for you, and more than once, while I was sitting at a hotel bar feeling sorry for myself, women came to try and keep me company. Some of them were very beautiful. Funny. Charismatic."

Jane fought a wave of territorial jealousy at the thought of other women hitting on her man in her absence. It was completely illogical, after her own indiscretion.

Kurt ran a hand through his hair, clearly stressed. "Was I ever tempted? Yeah, I was. I hadn't seen my wife in months, or a year, or more. I was lonely. I wanted to forget everything for a while. But from the moment you first told me you loved me back, out there in that hallway, there was never any chance that there'd be anyone else for me."

"Then why, Kurt? Why don't you want to try to make this work?" Jane's heart ached at how broken he looked. All she wanted was his arms around her, but he clearly needed space.

"Because you haven't apologised for cheating on me. Not even once."

With sickening horror, Jane realised he was right. "Kurt… I'm so—"

He cut her off with a bitter smile. "Oh, you're gonna say it now? It's too late for that."

Jane wrapped her arms around herself, a futile attempt to hold herself together, while the one person she'd always been able to count on turned his back on her. "I made a stupid mistake. I've been so angry at you and so worried about Avery that I just didn't let myself think about apologising, but I was wrong. I should have apologised on the plane, when you first found out. I just had a lot on my mind, but I'll apologise every day for the rest of our lives if you'll just forgive me."

He shook his head and moved back into the living room, as though he needed to be farther away from her. She stayed where she was, hurting too much to move.

"Kurt. Please don't shut me out, here. I want to know what you're thinking."

"You take me for granted, Jane. You walked in here tonight thinking it was a foregone conclusion that I'd let you move back in here. You didn't ask how I felt about it. You didn't apologise for cheating. You assumed that I love you so blindly that I can't live without you, that I'll forgive any transgression you make and that you don't even have to ask how I feel about it."

"I…" She couldn't formulate a proper response, words failing her. Had she really been so thoughtless?

"I know that you love me. I believe that. I have to. And you were my world. Every time something got in the way of our happiness, I put my own feelings aside, because I told myself you were more important. But I can't do that anymore, not when you don't do the same for me."

The anger seemed to have drained out of him now. As he approached her again, a tear fell down his cheek, and her own eyes began to fill up at the misery he exuded.

Why couldn't she move? Why couldn't she speak? He was her world, too. She should tell him that he was wrong, that she'd always fought for him… But she couldn't. Part of her knew he was right.

As she blinked to clear her vision, Kurt stopped in front of her. Without another word, he pulled off the wedding ring he'd worn every day since she'd first slid it onto his finger. Then he laid it gently on the breakfast bar beside them. It made a soft clink on contact with the clean surface.

"I'll see you at work on Monday. But I need you to leave now."

"No," she whispered, searching his face for any trace of doubt. "Please, Kurt. I'll do anything. Please, let's work this out."

He gave her a sad smile, then leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. "It's over, Jane. I'm sorry."

Before she could protest any further, he turned and headed into their bedroom, and softly shut the door behind him.

Shocked and heartbroken, Jane picked up Kurt's wedding ring with a shaking hand. Remembering how he'd carried hers with him for the whole time she'd been on the run, she fought back tears and slid the masculine wedding band into her pocket.

 _It's not over. It can't be. I won't let it._

Then, her limbs feeling almost as heavy as her heart, she picked up her bag again and left the apartment she could no longer call home.


	2. Single

**Author's Note:** Good to see I'm not the only one who had a lot of (negative) feelings about this particular part of season three! Thank you all for your comments, and especially to the guest reviewers, who I can't reply to personally. :)

* * *

Kurt leaned against the bedroom door and closed his eyes, hardly able to believe what he'd just done. Had he really just taken off his wedding ring, told Jane to leave, that it was over? Had he just made the worst of many mistakes he'd made in his life?

He'd ended their relationship. But had he made a mistake? Even as his heart clamoured for him to tear open the door, take Jane into his arms and tell her he'd changed his mind, his brain and his gut overruled it. This needed to happen. He couldn't sacrifice himself on the altar of his devotion to her for the rest of his life.

He loved her. God, he loved her. But if she'd felt for him even a fraction of the love he had for her, she never would have been able to cheat on him.

There was a scuffle out in the living room, then the door to the apartment opened and closed. Kurt let out his breath slowly and opened the bedroom door again, for no other reason than that he didn't think he could sleep if he wanted to, and he wanted to find some way to take his mind off what had just happened.

He noticed immediately that his wedding ring wasn't where he'd left it, and he stared at the empty space, perplexed. Had Jane taken it with her? That made no sense.

Last night, unable to bear looking at it anymore, he'd moved Jane's abandoned ring to the small box where she kept the few pieces of jewellery she owned. That was in the bedroom, so she couldn't have taken her own ring back if she'd wanted to. Now neither of their rings were where they should be. Kurt guessed it was fitting symbolism for the end of their relationship.

The music he'd been listening to when Jane had walked in had reached the end of its playlist. Kurt looked through his music collection, but everything reminded him of her. Happy or romantic songs they'd danced to. Sad songs he'd listened to during the long, lonely months without her, missing her and worrying about her. Nothing fit his current mood. Hell, he didn't even know what his current mood _was_. Angry? Devastated? Relieved?

At least he didn't have to wonder when she might be coming back. _If_ she might be coming back. He'd told her to leave, that he'd see her on Monday, and he was pretty sure she'd keep her distance while she adjusted to their new reality.

The weekend stretched out before him—long, empty and depressing. The only bright side was that he didn't have to worry about what kind of state he was in for work tomorrow. He grabbed the bottle of Scotch and a glass, and headed into Bethany's room—the place where he and Jane had spent the least amount of time together. The toddler bed was too small for him to sleep in, but it made a good seat.

Was he really going to sit in his two-year-old daughter's bedroom and get wasted, on his own? That was pathetic. Yet he didn't see any other way this night could work out, unless he could find himself a drinking buddy.

He poured himself a large measure of Scotch before sending Reade a text message. _You busy tonight?_

He didn't hold out much hope that Reade would be available. Since he'd gotten together with Meg, he'd started spending most of his weekend with her, on the occasions that their weekends were actually free. Not that Kurt blamed him. With a job like theirs, it was important to make as much time for their loved ones as they could.

Reade surprised him by calling instead of replying by text. "Kurt—you okay?"

"Not really," Kurt confessed. "I just took off my wedding ring and threw Jane out of our apartment."

"Wait, what?" There was a scuffle on the other end of the line, and then Reade said, "Okay, I just stepped out so we could talk properly. Run that by me again? I thought Jane was the one who left you?"

"She was. But she came back tonight. Wanted to try to work things out."

"I thought you'd be happy about that."

Kurt took another sip of Scotch before finally spitting the words out. "She cheated on me. Before I found her and brought her home. With Clem Hahn."

Reade cursed under his breath. "Okay, I'm coming over. You at home?"

"Yeah." Kurt swallowed more alcohol, trying to chase down the lump in his throat without success. "Reade? Thanks, buddy."

"Hey, you better not have drunk all that Scotch by the time I get there," Reade said. "I'll be over soon."

* * *

"Jane? What happened?"

Tasha drew her into the apartment with a concerned frown, and shut the door before turning back to her. "You're scaring me. What's going on? Is it Avery?"

"Kurt doesn't want me back."

"Oh, god…" Her friend wrapped her arms around her, and Jane struggled to not break down. "I'm so sorry. I don't have any bourbon, but if you're okay with neat vodka…"

Jane nodded. "That'd be good. Thanks."

"C'mon, come sit down. I'm texting Patterson."

Jane felt another rush of shame as she sat down on Tasha's couch. "You guys might not want to support me after you find out what happened. I… I know you were Kurt's friends first."

Tasha grabbed a bottle and some glasses, then brought them over and sat down. Once they both had drinks, she said, "I'm the queen of bad relationship decisions, and I'm really good at fence-sitting when my couple-friends break up, so hit me."

"I cheated on him."

Zapata's eyes widened. "What? When? Who with?"

By the time Jane had finished relating what had happened, Patterson had arrived with a bottle of bourbon. Zapata gave her a brief rundown of the situation while texting something, and Jane eyed her suspiciously.

"Wait—who are you texting?"

"Reade," Tasha said, putting down the phone. "I just wanted to make sure Weller has someone there for him, too."

Jane nodded slowly. "That's good. He probably needs someone. Thanks."

Patterson opened the bourbon and poured some into a fresh glass. "I know you're not meant to mix your spirits, but under the circumstances…"

"Thank you. Both of you." Jane couldn't help but get teary-eyed again. "You guys can hate me if you want."

"Opposite, opposite," Patterson said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Then she hesitated. "Well, not opposite, because I don't _love_ what you did, and if I ultimately have to pick a side, I'm gonna come down on Weller's. But I can understand how isolated you felt. Until Roman came up with his little death-faking plan, it must have been hard for you to imagine you'd ever get home. I took a look into finding the bounty holder and I got nowhere. You must have felt pretty hopeless."

Jane nodded. "I've been making excuses for my behaviour, though, and all it did was make Kurt angry. I think I have to accept that I'm just a terrible person."

Tasha rolled her eyes. "Now that really _is '_ opposite, opposite'. You've done more good with the past four years than people manage in their entire lives. Sure, you've made some mistakes, but we all do. What's important is how you make up for them. So what's your game plan?"

Jane gazed down at her drink, wondering if there was even a point in a game plan. Kurt clearly didn't want her back. "I don't know if I should try. All I ever seem to do is hurt him. Maybe he'd be happier with someone else."

Patterson and Zapata exchanged a glance.

"Look, Jane. No one said this to you at the time, because you guys seemed so happy to be back together, and we didn't want to rain on your parade, but…" Patterson hesitated.

Tasha took over. "While you were gone, especially for those first few months before he learned to cope, Weller was a mess. Stressed, tired, irritable, barely eating… He lost a ton of weight, hardly slept, took an indefinite leave of absence from work, spent all his money, called in every tiny favour anybody owed him…"

Jane felt worse and worse with every word. "And meanwhile, I cheated on him. See—all I do is hurt him. He deserves someone who can make him happy."

Patterson sighed. "Maybe that's part of the reason he's taking it so hard that you cheated, sure. But look at how you guys were when you got back. It was like… like the lights came back on for him. We've both known Weller for a while before you came into his life, and a while after you left, and Jane, you're like fuel for him. If there are people who are destined to be together—which, disclaimer, I don't actually believe in, because it's not scientific—but if there were, it'd be you guys. I think you can work past this, if you can convince him it's worth trying."

"Okay, Weller is stubborn, and he might need some convincing," Zapata said. "But when you're actually in the same place—when you're not in a black site or halfway across the world, I mean—you make him happier than you make him sad. At least, you used to, before the cheating thing."

"And you know what I've noticed?" Patterson said. "Since I got here, you've been freaking out about Weller leaving you, and you haven't mentioned the Avery thing once. Which makes me think it isn't something you should have left him over in the first place, and you subconsciously needed something to blame him for, so you didn't feel so bad about the cheating."

"No!" Jane protested. "When I left him, I thought Avery was dead. Now I know she's not and that Roman set him up, it doesn't seem like as big a deal. But it's still something that's a problem. I just have to get him back before I even worry about it."

"Okay. You know your own brain best." Patterson shrugged.

"Come on, Jane. Of all the people you could have called in to go with you to save Avery, you picked the guy you cheated with? It's like you _wanted_ Weller to find out," Tasha said. "I would have gone with you. So would Reade."

"I guess it does feel better to have it out in the open," Jane said. "Or at least, it did until Kurt took off his ring. Now I just wish I could do the last two years all over again, knowing what I know now."

"I think we've all had that feeling." Patterson gave her a quick one-armed hug.

"No kidding," Zapata muttered.

Jane put her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands. "I don't know what to do. I only remember being dumped once before, and I wasn't invested enough to try to fight it that time. And I've never been cheated on, at least, not that I know of."

"I have," Tasha said. "While I was with the NYPD. I really loved the guy, too, and he broke my heart. I've had trust issues ever since. Never dated a guy for more than a month, and I'm happiest with one-night stands now."

"Tasha, I don't think that's helping," Patterson said softly.

Jane downed her drink in one, hoping she'd pass out or something and wake up to find out this had just been a horrible dream. What had she done? Would Kurt ever recover from this?

"What I'm saying is that it hurts. A lot. You imagine every dirty little thing the cheater might have done with the other person, you wonder if you just weren't good enough to hold their attention… It's really not fun. _But_ ," Tasha continued, as Patterson cleared her throat pointedly, "I'm not like Weller. I swear, there is nothing that man won't forgive you for. You just have to convince him it's worth it, that you've learned from your mistakes and he's the most important thing in your life."

"So, what does that mean?" Jane asked, still more confused than anything else. "I should ask him how to prove to him that I don't take him for granted?"

"No, don't do that," Patterson said quickly. "For the love of god, don't do that."

"That's like asking him for a test that you can pass. It puts the pressure on him to think of a test, and to forgive you if you pass it. Weller would just see that as another way you weren't putting in any effort." Tasha filled up Jane's drink again as Jane groaned.

"I feel like I'm floundering around in the dark. I don't remember learning the rules for all this relationship stuff. Do I just need to read more _Cosmo_ or something?"

"If you do, skip the sex tips. I swear, there's stuff in that section that no human being has ever actually tried on another human being." Patterson shuddered.

Tasha gave Jane a reassuring smile. "It's gonna be okay. You're panicking. Weller's probably second-guessing himself and building up a giant stubborn wall to get himself through this. You're gonna have to get back through that wall somehow, and it'll probably be harder than you think. I don't even know where you'd start, so don't ask me. But when you do get through it, all you have to do is talk to each other. Don't shut each other out. Don't get paranoid. Don't keep secrets. Don't do anything that you know will hurt each other. Then you'll be fine."

"And that's why we're single," Patterson added, tipsily lifting her glass. "Cheers."

* * *

"You're gonna be fine, man."

Kurt sighed and pushed away his glass. "I should call her. Make sure she's okay."

Reade reached for the bottle of Scotch and pulled it out of Kurt's reach. "That's it, I'm cutting you off. Calling Jane is the absolute _worst_ thing you could do right now, and besides, Patterson and Zapata are with her. Gimme that phone."

Kurt reached for his cell phone, but Reade got to it first. Giving up, he sat back and closed his eyes. It just made the spinning of the room worse. "I love her. What was I thinking, trying to break up with her? I don't care what she did. I just want her back."

"Yeah, that's what you want _now_. But you did this for a reason, remember? You said she takes you for granted, and honestly, I agree. Even before she cheated. Every time she's needed you, you've been there. Can you really say the same for Jane when you've needed her?"

Kurt regarded his friend miserably. "No. But I don't know if I care. She's my wife, but she's more important than that. She's everything."

Reade rolled his eyes. "If you want to call her, you can do it when you're stone cold sober. If you really want to get back together with her, you can do it then. But I think you should take some time to think about your options. It won't kill her to sweat a little."

"Come on…" Kurt shook his head. "You're starting to sound like you did in the old days."

Smiling, Reade shrugged. "Hey, I like Jane. At least, I do _now._ I think you guys were great together. But she needed a wake-up call, and this is it. She never thought this would happen, and now it has, she's gotta take a long, hard look at herself. That can only be a good thing, for both of you."

Kurt frowned. "They say love is blind, right? I never imagined that Jane would cheat. D'you think I just don't see her clearly?"

Reade picked up one of Bethany's toy cars and shrugged. "Gotta say, I didn't imagine her cheating, either. She takes more from you than she gives back, but infidelity is different from that. I'd guess the cheating was because she couldn't come home. I've never seen her make eyes at other guys."

Relieved, Kurt nodded, but the relief didn't last long. "I don't know how to get past this, Ed. Every time I close my eyes, I see her with _him_ , and it just kills me."

"It's rough. But it gets easier. You just gotta give it time. Like I said, make her sweat a little. Let her do the running after _you_ for a change."

Snorting, Kurt rotated his empty glass in his fingers. "You're assuming she thinks I'm worth running after."

"If she doesn't run, she's not worth it. But I think she probably will. Your job is to decide if you want to let her catch you, or if you wanna switch to a whole new track."

"No other track has my name on it." Why did the thought of moving on make him want to cry so much?

"Hey, you find the right track, you can _put_ your name on it. Just…metaphorically speaking instead of literally," Reade joked.

The thought of another woman taking Jane's place seemed so implausible, he shut it down fast, changing the subject. "Thanks for sitting here in my kid's bedroom, listening to all this."

"No problem. You'd do the same for me." Reade glanced around, amused. "Just…let's do it somewhere for grown-ups next time." He paused for a moment, then asked, "So, you gonna leave the taskforce?"

Every fibre of Kurt's being resisted that idea. Most of that resistance was because he didn't want to reduce Jane's backup, but he knew he couldn't leave, even if he'd wanted to. "Roman wouldn't give me the chance. If I step back, he'll notice, and he'll probably set something up to pull me right back in."

"Good point," Reade conceded. "I've heard some bad in-law stories, but man, yours are the worst."

 _For all of us._ _And Jane, most of all._

He tried not to think about leaving her without support while her brother terrorised them all. He'd still be there for her—just not after work.


	3. Not Giving Up

**Author's Note:** Thanks for sticking with this very slow-moving start. Glad to have you all along for the ride!

* * *

Jane had managed to sleep under the effects of alcohol on Friday night, but Saturday and Sunday she'd tossed and turned, anxious and unable to rest. Now that Monday was here, she was a jumble of dread and anticipation, hoping to get a few moments alone with Kurt before the work day began.

Seeing him smiling at Nas Kamal outside Reade's office gave her a sharp, unpleasant shock.

If she and Kurt had been on stable ground, she would have been happy to see Nas. They'd never been close, but she owed the NSA agent for initiating the deal that allowed her to earn her freedom, and though Kurt and Nas had been together at one point, Jane used to be secure enough in her marriage that it wouldn't have bothered her.

Today, though, she was already off-kilter, and Nas' presence didn't help. Instead of trying to approach Kurt, she veered off down the hallway and headed for Patterson's lab.

When the team all congregated to begin the debriefing, the atmosphere in the lab was so tense that Jane just wanted to leave. Reade looked decidedly unfriendly, Rich clueless yet curious, Patterson and Zapata concerned, and Nas uncomfortable.

Kurt stepped past Jane with a quiet, "Morning." For a moment, he looked as weary and heartsick as she felt, but then she sensed him closing off, and had to swallow the lump in her throat.

She somehow managed to return the greeting before Nas began to update them on the situation. A destructive virus had been stolen from the NSA, and it was critical that they found it quickly. As they watched a proof-of-concept video—a ship being blown up by the virus—Jane knew she should care, but she couldn't bring herself to feel anything, in case one emotion led to another and she fell apart again.

As the team began to separate to chase leads, Jane stepped towards Reade. "Could I, um, have a word with you?"

Reade nodded, seeming to thaw slightly when he saw how close she was to losing it. "Shoot."

"I'd like to sit this one out, if you guys can handle it without me. I thought I'd be okay, but I…I think I'd be a liability today."

Reade sighed, motioning for her to follow him into a less populated corner of the lab. "Look, Jane, I think what you did was damn stupid and selfish, but you're still my friend, and I care about you. So whatever you need, within reason, just say the word. We might need you later, but for now, you can head out. Maybe go see Avery or something."

Relieved, Jane exhaled hard. "Thank you. If you need me, just call."

She made it to the locker room without encountering anyone else, and leaned against her locker with a shaky breath. _Come on. Just get out of the building without crying, and you can call today a success._

She grabbed her jacket and shut her locker door, then glanced up as someone else entered the locker room.

 _Kurt._

"You okay?" he asked, his body language and expression guarded. She still sensed his concern, and it only made her feel more fragile.

"Yeah. I, uh…" She didn't want to tell him she needed to get away from him. That just made everything about her pain again. "How about you?"

He shrugged. "Hanging in there. Where you going?"

 _Anywhere but here._ "Back to the hotel, probably. Reade said it was okay."

Kurt nodded slowly. "I should get back to work."

As he turned to leave, she scrambled for some way to connect with him, to let him know she wasn't going to give up on their relationship just yet. "Kurt?"

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"I don't accept that it's over. I _can't_."

He lowered his head a little, tension radiating from him, but he didn't speak.

"You have every right to be angry, but…can we talk when this case is done? Please?"

Kurt hesitated for a long moment, then reached for the door handle. "There's nothing more to say, Jane."

"Wait," she pleaded. "I can't take back the cheating, but I can work on not taking you for granted. I am _so_ sorry for everything, and I _do_ want to work on it. But I can't, if you won't let me try. Please, just give me a chance."

Kurt paused for one moment more, then opened the locker room door. "I wanted to try to make things up to you. It didn't make any difference. You left me anyway."

Before she could reply, he walked away, leaving the door to slowly swing shut behind him.

* * *

Kurt wasn't sure how he got through the case. Rich was more irritating than usual, the whole team atmosphere was off, and Nas was too single-mindedly focused on her goal to really engage with the emotional undercurrents around her.

It wasn't until the threat was neutralised that she turned to Kurt and said, "So, trouble in paradise?"

"More like 'paradise lost'."

Nas' perfectly tapered eyebrows rose. "It's over?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Nas." The pain on Jane's face, and the ache in his chest, were too acute for him to cheapen by talking about the situation with his ex.

"Fair enough." She shrugged. "Just don't let yourself stand in the way of your own happiness, all right? I'd say the same to Jane, if she were here."

Kurt nodded, only half-listening.

"The past is in the past. Focus on the future, and what you want to get from it." She put a light hand on his shoulder before stepping back. "Goodbye, Kurt."

He watched her go, sighing. _Easy for her to say. She doesn't even know the circumstances._

Longing to go home and curl up on the couch with his wife, to de-stress and forget about the case, he felt another sharp pang of yearning for Jane. The worst part was that the only thing stopping him from seeing her was his own decision to keep his distance.

Being around her today had been difficult—even more so when she'd begged to be allowed to fix their broken relationship. She'd looked on the verge of tears, desperate to prove herself to him, and he'd almost been swayed. Until he'd remembered that just a week earlier, it had been him pleading for _her_ forgiveness, and she'd still left her wedding ring behind and walked out.

If he took her back now, nothing would change. She'd probably be extra attentive for a while, but then she'd get comfortable again, and fall back into their old ways. Maybe she'd never cheat again, but she'd still take him for granted.

Even as he knew he was making the right decision by refusing her, his heart was in shreds, and guilt had taken up what seemed like permanent residence in his stomach. He didn't remember ever having been at such odds with himself before.

When he returned home, it was just past dawn. The dark web partyand the ensuing chaos control had taken all night, and Kurt was more than ready to go to bed. It had been so long since he'd had a decent night's rest, he thought he was just about exhausted enough to sleep until the evening.

Reaching the bedroom, he noticed an envelope on the end of the bed, and picked it up, trepidation taking root in his mind. What if Jane had decided to run again? Sure, she had a daughter here now, but from what Kurt had seen, Avery was still very distrustful of her birth mother. Maybe Jane had decided both he and Avery would be happier without her. Maybe—

He opened the envelope, stopping his imagination in its tracks. Thinking up worst-case scenarios was useless when the answer probably lay within reach.

Jane's plain but neat handwriting made his heart wrench, before he registered the words she'd written.

 _Kurt,_

 _Just came by to pick up some more clothes. I know you don't want to talk right now, so I'll keep this short._

 _I'm sorry for everything I've put you through. Maybe a better person would just let you go, to find happiness somewhere else, but I'm not giving up on us, not unless you tell me there's no hope._

 _I love you, and I miss you._

 _Jane_

Taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the lump that had risen in his throat, Kurt stared down at the letter, feeling more optimistic than he had in weeks.

Jane's note didn't change how much she'd hurt him, or how much he'd hurt her. It didn't erase her infidelity or his deception, didn't change the balance of their relationship. They still had so much work to do, on both sides. He wasn't about to call her and tell her to come home right then.

But for the first time since Jane had learned about Avery's existence, Kurt had real, shining hope that they'd eventually get through this dark time in their lives. That they'd come out the other side united, their love stronger than it ever had been before.

Maybe he was fooling himself, but he had to believe in their future together. She was determined to try to fix things, and despite how much salt her betrayal had ground into his wounds, he wanted her to make the attempt.

There was a second page tucked behind the first, and Kurt turned his attention to it, his lips curving in a sad smile.

It was a sketch of their wedding rings—hers delicate, thin and studded with tiny diamonds, and his thicker, darker and plainer, but no less symbolic. Kurt glanced from the sketch to his left hand, where his ring usually sat. His hand had felt strange ever since he'd taken it off.

On a hunch, he went to Jane's jewellery box and opened it. As he'd expected, her wedding ring was gone, and he was certain that next time he saw her, it would be back on her finger, where it belonged.

If only fixing a marriage was as simple as putting rings back on fingers, relying on love to get them through. Their marriage would need much, much more.

But this was a starting point.


	4. Daughters and Drawings

**Author's Note:** You guys are the best. I thought I was going to fail at NaNoWriMo, but it turns out I just needed to switch to a different fic - this one! So here's a bit more angst, with added Allie. :) I'm hoping I didn't make it too much like she's making excuses for Jane. I think she's just good at stepping back and seeing both sides. **  
**

* * *

The next few weeks were one long, painful blur for Jane. She spent her days working cases, as she always had, but unless it was to discuss an aspect of the investigation at hand, she and Kurt exchanged no more than the briefest of pleasantries.

A week after he'd rejected her, she'd tried again to suggest a conversation, and he'd shot her down. "Every time I look at you, I imagine you with another man. I need space, Jane. If you really respect my feelings, stop trying to do this on your schedule and do it on mine."

Wounded by his harsh tone, she'd retreated, agonising over how to handle the situation if he wouldn't even allow her to talk to him. At the same time, what he said made sense to her. Again, she was trying to cross the boundaries that he'd set, and in doing so, putting her own needs ahead of his. Although she was worried that he'd get used to not having her around and decide he was happier without her, she repressed her fears as much as she could and kept her distance.

Forced to accept that their separation could be long-term, she used some of her leftover K and R money to rent a small apartment. It wasn't anywhere near as nice as home, but it was warm, functional, cheaper than staying in a hotel, and it served as a change of scenery for Avery, who was going stir crazy in her safehouse. Bonding with her estranged daughter was a gradual task, and Avery's reservations were slow to diminish, but Jane felt positive that with time, they could be family in an emotional sense as well as biological.

Avery was concerned that she'd been the catalyst for Kurt's split from Jane, and though Jane attempted to reassure her, she wasn't sure how convincing she was. Avery's manipulation of Kurt had been the start of their relationship's breakdown, though the rest of the underlying problems would probably have come to light at some point anyway.

"He loves you so much. I could tell that, from the moment I saw him arguing with the hotel check-in clerk. He was frantic to find you, and when he talked about you, his words were just so warm and caring. I can't imagine his feelings changing so drastically."

"Have you ever been in a serious relationship?" Jane asked.

Avery sighed. "Ummm… Not really. I had a few dates here and there, but then my mom got sick and I wasn't in the mood for socialising much. Then after she died, it wasn't that long until my dad died too, so I never really got serious with anyone."

"I'm sorry," Jane said softly. It must have been tough on her daughter to face so much death in her teenage years.

"So were you gonna impart some kind of wisdom about how in serious relationships, blah blah blah?" Avery asked, deflecting her sympathy with typical teenage cynicism.

Jane couldn't help but smile a little. "Your parents told you about the birds and the bees, right?"

Avery rolled her eyes. "Oh, gross. Don't make me think about you and Kurt like that." As Jane just gazed at her, eyebrows raised, she sighed. "Yes. Sperm. Egg. Birth control. STDs. I got the whole works. You don't have to go through it again."

"Okay, good." _At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about._ "But what I was going to say originally was, you can love someone more than anything else, but if you can't trust them, it doesn't matter how much you love them. It's not gonna work out unless you can re-establish that trust. And maybe Kurt and I can't do that. I…don't know yet."

Avery nodded. "That makes sense. I guess it's not that different from you and me learning to trust each other, huh?"

"Exactly. We didn't start out great, since I didn't get to raise you, and then you were manipulated by Roman. But we'll get there, if we both want to trust and be trusted enough." Jane gave her daughter a small smile.

"I guess so. What about you and Kurt?"

Jane looked down at her wedding ring and wondered the same thing. "I hope so."

* * *

Even though she'd decided to respect Kurt's need for space, she couldn't step back completely. She was certain that he'd interpret that as her not caring enough to fight for him at all. For the first couple of weeks, she wasn't sure how to make inroads without hurting him, but on her lunch break one day, she noticed a new brand of candy bar that she was positive he'd love. Her husband's sweet tooth had surprised her when she'd first learned about it, but it was one of her favourite things about him.

After a quick internal debate, she bought one and took it back to the office at the end of her lunch. Kurt had taken an earlier break than she had, and was engrossed in a report on his computer screen, cross-checking it against a printout and scribbling things down on a notepad.

Without disturbing him, she slid the candy bar onto the edge of his desk and continued on towards her own workspace, keeping half an eye on him while she resumed the phone calls on her list.

A few minutes later, Kurt's concentration broke enough for him to notice the new addition to his desk. Looking puzzled but intrigued, he picked up the candy bar, studied it for a second, then looked around for possible sources.

When their eyes met, his eyebrow rose slightly in a question. Her pulse quickening, Jane gave him a quick smile and looked back at her screen, not wanting to push further than he was comfortable with. When she dared to look in his direction again, he'd resumed working, the candy bar placed next to his coffee mug, the way he treated all his mid-afternoon snacks.

It was no huge step forward, but it was a way to show that she was ready when he was, and that he was on her mind. After that, she made sure she picked up a couple of treats for him every week, saving them for moments when he looked stressed or in need of a break.

She also sent him drawings, leaving one in their mailbox every Saturday night. Working from her fondest memories of him, she drew him on the first night they'd met, her hand on his face and his expression striving for blankness, though he was clearly uncomfortable. Underneath, she talked about how alone she'd felt, and how he'd been the first person she'd really connected with. How much she'd appreciated him tolerating her, despite his obvious aversion to being touched. How badly she'd wanted to be able to remember him, and how disappointed she'd been when her mind hadn't come up with anything.

The next week, she sent him a sketch of him the night they'd first kissed, a little embarrassed and floundering for composure as he'd handed his nephew, Sawyer, the bag of groceries he'd been out shopping for. The memory always made her smile, and she made sure to write a note detailing how nervous she'd been as she'd waited for him, then how relieved she was and how much she'd wanted him as he'd finally begun to kiss her back. Then her shock and amusement at being interrupted, and the way she'd made herself walk away because her feelings had been so intense.

Next was a sketch of him crouched behind a car, wearing his FBI-issue vest, his weapon drawn and his attention on her. She'd written underneath how she loved how well they could read each other out in the field, and back each other up to come out of each situation safely, sometimes without saying anything. Their partnership had meant a great deal to her back when she'd had nothing, and as their bond had deepened, so had her appreciation of the way they worked together as partners.

After that, she drew a close-up of his face as she remembered it from after they'd first admitted their love for each other, when they'd been lying in bed, gazing at each other with soft smiles, hardly able to believe that they'd finally had sex. Underneath, she related how safe and loved he'd made her feel, and how right it had felt that they were together. After debating with herself, she also included a couple of lines about how he'd made her feel during their first time, blushing a little.

The next week, she sent a picture of him gazing down at his newborn daughter, looking absolutely wonderstruck. She'd taken a couple of surreptitious photographs with her phone that day, but she might as well have brought in a professional photographer with a full set of lights, for all that he would have noticed. Nothing except for Bethany had existed for him in that moment, and when he'd finally looked up towards Jane, tears in his eyes, she'd been unable to help but laugh at how overwhelmed with love and protectiveness he'd seemed. She wrote it all down, cherishing the memory all over again as she relived it.

The obvious choice for her next sketch was the way he'd looked at her as he'd spoken their marriage vows, but she was hesitant to draw it, afraid that it would bring to the forefront of his mind the way she'd broken those same vows, and cause him pain. Instead, she drew him asleep in the passenger seat of the removal van as they'd made the long drive from New York City to Denver, to start their new life together. She described how full of excitement she'd been for the possibilities, how rewarding she'd found it to make the new house their own, and how she'd looked forward to getting to know Bethany better as she grew and developed her own little personality.

It didn't matter if she came back to the present moment before he forgave her. She could always work backwards again, picking more special moments from their shared past, until he realised that even though she hadn't shown it as overtly, the way she felt about him was intense and genuine.

And she'd come up with another plan for a specific moment. It was almost time to put that one into place.

* * *

The anniversary of Taylor Shaw's disappearance—of her _death_ —was always a depressing day for Kurt. In the past, he'd taken the day off work to drive up to Clearfield, to visit the memorial where Emma, her mother, used to hold yearly services up until her death. Since he'd discovered Taylor's body, he visited her grave instead, on the outskirts of Allegheny National Forest. It was unmarked, but he still remembered exactly where it was.

He sat there for a long time that year, thinking about Taylor, and about Jane. Despite the fact that they'd never met, the two were inseparably linked in his mind, thanks to Sandstorm's plans. He'd wanted to bring Jane to 'meet' Taylor this year, as strange as that seemed to him. He doubted Taylor was haunting her gravesite, but still, a superstitious part of him wanted his childhood friend to know that he'd finally found happiness.

Those plans had fallen by the wayside as soon as he and Jane had begun having problems. Maybe by next year, they'd be in a good place and he could bring her here, but not this time.

For the millionth time, he wondered what sort of person Taylor would have grown up to be. Now that adult-Taylor and Jane were linked in his mind, it was hard to imagine they'd be all that different. He was sure they would have been friends, if they'd been able to meet. Jane had a lot of the core traits that Taylor had exhibited when they were young—a daredevil, unafraid to argue or stand up for a good cause, physically active...

Taylor had never shown a particular aptitude for art, though. Maybe that was unfair of him, since she'd only been five years old when she'd died. She could have developed better skills later in life. But somehow, he didn't see her being the type.

Jane, on the other hand, was a talented artist, and every weekend since he'd told her she couldn't come home, she'd been leaving him sketches. It might have struck him as odd that she was sending him pictures of himself, if she hadn't accompanied each one with her recollection of what had been happening at the time. She drew him into a new memory every week: the first time they'd met, the first time they'd kissed, the first time they'd made love… Each was a memory he cherished, but only had from his own perspective. Reading her thoughts about those days in their past had given him deeper insight into how she felt about him, and what stuck out to her as important.

With each weekly memory—and each small, sweet treat she left on his desk as a token of affection—his hurt receded a little. These days, when he looked at her, it was easier to see his wife, the woman he loved, than the woman who had cheated on him. If he let himself dwell on her betrayal, it still ate him up inside, but maybe it always would.

Jane had stopped trying to force him into a conversation he wasn't ready for, though he frequently looked up from his desk to find her watching him with subtle longing. It didn't seem to be an intentional guilt trip, however—she always dropped her gaze with a wistful smile when he caught her looking.

Maybe it was time to have a conversation. Or maybe rushing it would be just as big a mistake as concealing Avery's existence from her.

His thoughts were derailed as he opened his apartment door to the scent of coffee, and the unexpected sound of…toddler toys?

"Daddy!"

Confused, Kurt dropped into a crouch to meet Bethany's enthusiastic hug. "Hey, there's my girl. What are you doing here?"

"Surprise!" His daughter beamed at him, and he couldn't help but smile back as his heart melted.

 _No kidding. I sure wasn't expecting this._

Allie came out of Bethany's bedroom with a welcoming smile. "Hey, you're finally back!"

He picked Bethany up and got to his feet. "Hey. Not that I'm not glad to see you, but how did you get in?"

Allie crossed to the percolator and poured a couple of mugs of fresh coffee, then fished a sippy cup out of what they'd jokingly termed Bethany's 'go bag'. "Oh, I picked the lock," she said sarcastically, then reached into her pocket to pull out Jane's key, complete with the keychain of a fluffy monster that Bethany had picked out for her stepmother for Christmas.

Kurt's heart twinged at the sight of it, and Allie sighed. "I know that look. I thought I'd seen the last of it when you found her last time, but…"

"Yeah, me too."

Once they got Bethany settled with her toys, Allie and Kurt sat down to catch up. "So, is there a reason you didn't call to tell me you guys were in town?" he asked, still mystified.

"You're a little slow on the uptake today, huh?" Allie teased. "Because it's not a surprise if you know we're coming, and Jane wanted us to surprise you."

Kurt blinked. "She set this whole thing up? You didn't just call her when you found out I wasn't home?"

"Nope." Allie watched him closely for a reaction. "She called a couple of weeks ago. Said you could use some Bethany therapy, and it had to be exactly today that we showed up. Taylor's memorial day, right?"

"Yeah."

Bethany distracted him by throwing herself at his legs, and he ruffled her hair and offered her a plush toy before turning back to Allie.

"Jane and I…we still haven't talked."

His ex gave him a knowing look. "Let me guess whose idea that was."

"You also want to guess who cheated on who?" he shot back, irritated.

He hadn't previously divulged the details of his separation from Jane, but Allie didn't look shocked. Apparently, Jane had filled her in.

"And I sympathise. I really do. In any other situation, I'd tell you to get a good lawyer and get a divorce right now, because once a cheater, always a cheater."

Sensing there was more to come, Kurt prompted, "But…?"

"But she thought she could never come home. She'd tried to get to the bounty holder and she couldn't, and she'd resigned herself to the fact that she'd be putting us all in danger if she ever came back. Can you imagine how depressing that must have been? How isolating? Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. If you thought you could never see Jane again, and someone offered you sex while you were hurting, are you a hundred percent certain you could say no?"

Her knowing look made it clear that she was thinking of the night they'd conceived Bethany.

"That was different. Jane and I were never officially together until after that."

"Quit nitpicking and think about it. You know it must have hurt her to come out of that black site and learn you had a baby on the way. Sure, you guys had made things official by the time Jane cheated, but we both know you only…" She glanced at Bethany, who was reading a cardboard book to some of her toys, making up the story as she went along. Lowering her voice a little, she continued, "…you only had sex with me that night because you were grieving for what you thought you could never have again with Jane. Whether or not you'd actually agreed to date at that point, you were both emotionally invested and then something went wrong and put you both out of each other's reach."

"So you're saying I should just get over it." Kurt shifted uncomfortably. He still thought Allie was wrong. The situations were different. Jane could have at least written to him from Europe and told him she was moving on before she'd actually jumped into bed with someone else. Not that he would have accepted that. _Ugh, this whole thing makes my head hurt._

"I'm saying is that life doesn't always fall into perfect little moral boxes." Allie sighed. "Anyway, Jane said it was more than just the cheating, and she sounds more than determined to try to make your relationship more balanced."

"Yeah." He shrugged. "I don't know if it will work, but I want to give her the opportunity to try. At some point."

"Soon?" Allie prompted.

"Yeah. But I don't know if it'll work. If she loves me even half as much as I love her."

Allie groaned. "Kurt, as someone who's been observing your relationship with Jane from the start, let me tell you this: no one loves _anything_ even half as much as you love her. I've met heroin addicts who don't love heroin as much as you love that woman."

Confused, Kurt frowned at her. "So you're saying what? That I love her too much?"

"No. I think what you two have is great. But Jane had a screwed-up childhood that she barely remembers. She doesn't remember all the mistakes she made while she was growing up, so she hasn't learned from them. She was brought up by a woman who pitted her against her brother to compete for affection. She's emotionally stunted as a result, and of course she's still learning what unconditional love is. She never had it before she met you."

Allie shrugged and sipped her coffee, while Kurt processed her words. Before he could speak, she began again. "But sure, she needs to step up her game. No one's denying that, not even Jane. And of course you should hold her accountable for her mistakes. I've already given her an earful for not treating you better. And if she screws up again, you bet I'll be helping you find a divorce lawyer. You don't deserve to be treated like dirt."

"I'm getting very mixed messages here, Allie." She was making sense, but he was still unsure what to do about everything.

"Back in the day, I tried to love you when you didn't want to let anyone in. It was impossible. You just put up these walls that I couldn't even think about climbing, no matter how much I wanted to get to the person you were inside. And I can tell you've started rebuilding since you left Jane." Allie touched his shoulder, shaking her head. "She's going to need a little dynamite to blow a tunnel through your defences, but you're the one who's gonna have to break out the wrecking ball once she's partway there."

"Ball?" Bethany asked, holding up a colourful plastic ball as big as her head.

"You want to play with the ball for a while?" Allie smiled at her.

They turned their attention to their daughter, and Kurt's spirits were lifted just by being with Bethany. Not only that, but his mood was improved by the reason she was here. Jane had known how hard today would be for him, and since her direct comfort wouldn't be welcomed, she'd planned something special for him regardless.

It was considerate and sweet, and he wished he could get past his own stubbornness to call and tell her so. But though he stared at his phone for a while as Allie stepped out on the balcony to call Connor, he couldn't bring himself to dial her number. Not yet.


	5. Reconciliation

**Author's Note:** So, the episode the other day kind of short-circuited my brain, so this took longer than I planned. Sorry about that!

* * *

"Jane?"

At the sound of Kurt's voice, Jane looked up from stashing her bulletproof vest back in her locker. She and Tasha had been able to apprehend a suspect in one of the tattoo cases, but not without a lengthy gunfight. She'd taken a bullet in the plates on her way from one point of cover to another, and her side would be aching for a couple of days, but otherwise, they'd come through unscathed.

"Hey," she said, smiling at her estranged husband. "What do you need?"

It was easier to talk to him that way, these days—to make their interactions transactional. He needed information from her; she would give it, and they'd go on with their work.

"Actually, I just wanted to say thank you. For yesterday."

Jane's heart skipped, and she closed her locker door as casually as she could, hoping her nervousness didn't show. _Don't screw this up, Jane._ "You're welcome. I hope it made the day a little easier."

Kurt gave her a small, but genuine smile—the first time he'd shown any kind of warmth towards her for a couple of months. "It did. I appreciate it."

"I'm glad it helped." She didn't want this interaction with him to end, but what else could she say? She'd seen Allie and Bethany when they'd come to pick up her key to the apartment, so asking how they were would be a little pointless. She ended up gazing at him with a hopefulness that was rapidly turning awkward as the moment stretched out.

"Zapata said you'd taken a bullet in the vest. You okay?"

Slightly flustered, she glanced down at the sore spot on the right side of her abdomen. "Oh—yeah. It was only a nine mil—not much stopping power."

"Good." Kurt stepped back, nodding, but not before she'd seen a flash of relief cross his face. "I'm gonna head to the interrogation room. Reade's waiting on me, so…"

"Okay." Jane stifled her disappointment and nodded back, still striving to keep her demeanour casual. "See you later."

After he'd left, she stared at the door for a moment, then reached into her shirt and pulled out Kurt's wedding ring, which she'd taken to wearing on a long silver chain inside her shirt. For the first time, he'd taken a small step back to her—or had he? Maybe he was just being polite because she'd done something nice for him.

After examining the ring for a few seconds, torn between optimism and realism, she slipped the chain back inside her clothing and headed back to SIOC.

* * *

That Saturday night, as he gazed from his balcony at the traffic moving along the Brooklyn Bridge, Kurt searched his soul for the right course of action. Jane would be coming by within the next twenty minutes to drop her weekly drawing into their mailbox. With a little detective work, he'd discovered that she left it at roughly the same time every week, just before she headed to their local gym, a couple of blocks away from the apartment.

This week, he wanted to lie in wait for her outside the building, the way she'd waited for him just before their first kiss, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He just wasn't sure what he'd say—or do—when she got there.

As the moment approached, he was still no closer to figuring it out, but if he didn't go downstairs now, he'd have to wait another week. And although he'd been hesitant to call her just a few days ago, after their stilted conversation in the locker room, he'd realised he didn't want things to deteriorate any further between them. Not only that, but he missed her.

Giving himself no more time to obsess, he went outside and sat in the same spot as Jane had that night. Less than five minutes later, he noticed her approaching, at a fast walk at first, but then slowing as she recognised him and began to wonder if she should just leave.

He got to his feet, gesturing that she should come over, and Jane tentatively crossed the distance between them. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself."

"I was just gonna drop off—" she started, her expression guarded.

"I know," he interrupted, saving her the explanation.

Jane reached into her gym bag and pulled out an envelope identical to the others she'd been leaving for him. "If you're waiting for someone, I'll just hand it over and get going, I guess."

He took the envelope and put it into his jacket pocket, shaking his head. "I was waiting for _you_."

Jane's eyebrows rose in genuine surprise. "You were?"

In stark contrast to the problem that had caused him to separate from her, Kurt's heart now ached at how little she expected from him. Things had changed so much in such a short time, some for the better, but others…

Acting instinctively, he stepped forward and slid his hand across the side of her neck, leaning in close enough to make his intentions clear. Jane gazed up at him, her breath catching, and he could read both hope and anxiety in her expression. She tilted her head, their lips only an inch apart, then stalled, searching his face for answers.

After a charged, drawn-out moment that made his heart race, Kurt brushed his lips over hers. Jane made a tiny, involuntary noise of relief and kissed him back, a slow, heartfelt reconnection that stole his breath.

Kurt had worried that he'd never be able to kiss her again without wondering how he compared to Clem Hahn, but now he was actually with her, all he could think about was how much he'd missed her, how much he loved her.

As he drew back to look into her face, he realised she was trembling.

"What does this—?"

He kissed her again, partly because he had no idea how to answer her question. Jane pressed closer, her arms around his neck and her gym bag thudding to the sidewalk next to them, forgotten. Kurt lost himself in her warm, familiar, loving embrace, one kiss merging into the next until the intrusive blare of a car's horn broke into their shared consciousness. They parted, breathless and smiling.

Jane gazed up at him, her happiness holding more than a hint of confusion. "Talk to me, Kurt."

Kurt tried to gather his thoughts, realising he still had no idea what to do next. "I just needed to see you."

Her lips twitched, and he realised she'd said the exact same thing to him right before she'd kissed him that first time. "I'm glad."

Losing the battle with himself, he sighed. "Things might not be right for a while. And I'm gonna need a little more time before you move back in here. But… Do you want to come up for an hour or two? We could talk, maybe order in some dinner if you haven't eaten yet…"

"Yeah," Jane agreed, tears springing to her eyes. "I'd… I'd really like that."

Kurt kissed her forehead gently, then bent to pick up her gym bag. "Okay. Good."

The silence was a little awkward as they went inside, making their way up to the apartment without encountering any of their neighbours. Jane closed the door behind them and stopped, as though unsure whether to act like a guest or settle in like she half-owned the place—which she did.

Knowing she usually drank oolong tea at this time of night, Kurt inclined his head towards the couch. "Have a seat. I'll make you some tea. Unless you want a beer?"

"Thanks. Tea's perfect," she said softly, and sat by the window, looking out into the night as he headed into the kitchen.

Once they had drinks and had ordered some Indian food, Kurt came to sit beside his wife. "So, anything I missed this past couple of months?"

Jane considered for a moment. "Not that much. I see Avery every few days. That's going…okay."

"Okay?" He laced his fingers through hers, and she glanced down with a quick smile.

"About as well as can be expected. I mean, you've seen her when she's been at the office. She's prickly. Doesn't like being caged in. Wants to find Crawford yesterday."

"Yeah, I noticed." Jane's daughter had a lot in common with her. Now that Avery was safe—and he knew she was alive—he could find it amusing, but he still couldn't shake a flare of anxiety every now and then when he looked at her. He'd been carrying around the burden of her 'death' for so long, and worrying about what his wife would think when she found out. Some of that residual fear still remained.

"But here and there, when she forgets to be a sulky teenager…there are bright spots." She sighed, but her expression was hopeful. He sensed she wanted a deeper bond with Avery very much.

"You'll get there." He squeezed her hand.

"Yeah. I think we will." Jane glanced up into his face, and he sensed she wasn't just talking about Avery. Then she cleared her throat a little and changed the subject. "How about you? Anything exciting happen while I've been away?"

They caught up while they ate, the conversation slower to come than usual, a little less relaxed, but still enjoyable. After the food was gone, Kurt shifted a few inches closer on the couch and took Jane's hand again.

"I want to thank you."

Jane blinked. "For what?"

Kurt stroked his thumb across the back of her hand in a slow, repetitive arc as he spoke. "For giving me space when I asked you to. And for the drawings. And the all the chocolate."

She smiled. "You're welcome. I didn't want to push, but I…"

"It was perfect." He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it gently. "And thoughtful. And it meant a lot that you listened."

Jane nodded. "I don't want to make the same mistakes again, Kurt."

"I know. Neither do I." Her sincerity was obvious, as was her anxiety. Hoping to quell the latter, Kurt told her, "I missed you. Every day."

"I missed you, too." She took a deep, shaky breath, then asked, "What do you need from me? I mean… I don't want to screw up now that we're talking again. I just… I don't—"

Kurt kissed her again, stopping her before she could overthink any further. Jane laughed softly against his lips and melted against him, and he ran his fingers down her throat to the hollow between her collar bones, then lower, to the shallow V at the front of her shirt.

Jane drew back before he could continue, her face amused. "I thought you wanted to talk."

"Yeah. But I wanted to stop you from worrying, too." He cupped her face in his hand and looked into her eyes. "I fell in love with you because you're who you are, Jane. We both have things we need to work on. We know that, and we will. But I'm not gonna make you play guessing games. If there's something I need you to do, or stop doing, I'll tell you. Okay?"

"Okay," she whispered, and laid her head on his shoulder, snuggling close. "I'll do the same."

"Having said that… I think we should get the difficult stuff out of the way. To clear the air completely." He didn't want to ruin their evening, but they couldn't just ignore all this.

"Yeah." Jane held onto him for a moment longer, then sat up, shifting away from him a little. "We have to clean up the bloodstains, not just put down a new rug on top of them."

He couldn't help but smile a little. "Nice analogy."

Jane took a second, then said, "I think I got everything I wanted to say out in the open, but you… You mostly went quiet, so…"

Kurt nodded slowly, then asked the question that had been burning in his chest for a couple of months now. "How did you feel about him? Did you love him?"

"No." Jane fidgeted uncomfortably, but met his eyes. "I was never even close to loving him."

It should have been a relief, but he couldn't feel it. Not yet. "The way you worked with him…the way you connected with him…was a lot like the way we started out."

Jane nodded. "Yeah. I won't deny that. We were partners for around six months. I was trying to stay under the radar, so after the job where we met, he took the assignments, we worked them together, he got paid, then he gave me half."

"That's a lot of trust you put in him. What if he'd sold you out for a share of the bounty? Or killed you for it himself?" Kurt didn't know why he was pushing this. He guessed he just wanted to understand what her thought processes about Hahn had been.

"He didn't know about it at first. By the time I told him, it…it was pretty obvious he was invested in our partnership enough to want to keep me safe." Jane looked down at her hands.

"You mean you could tell he wanted you." He was still somehow cultivating just the right amount of numbness to get through this conversation without reacting badly. And could he blame the guy for falling for Jane? Of course not. He had fallen for her, too.

"Yeah," she whispered.

"And you felt the same."

"No." She looked up at him, eyes sorrowful. "Not the same. Nowhere near as strong. Kurt…" For a second, she seemed to be lost for words, but then she said, "I'd been relying on no one but myself for almost a year when I met him. It was being part of a team again that drew me to him. Working alone has its advantages, but you don't have anyone to back you up. The only opinion you have to go on is your own. And I was going a little crazy. I needed a friend. That's all he was to me for most of that partnership. A friend who, in another life, could have been more."

As Kurt listened, Allie's words about isolation and depression came back to him, and he remembered his own frustrations after his father's death—the ones that just wouldn't leave him alone. He'd been glad to lose himself in Allie that night, distracting himself, but the morning after, they'd both regretted it.

Maybe, despite the obvious commitment differences, he could understand Jane's perspective a little. Which didn't make what she'd done right, but…

Guilty people generally didn't like silence, and Jane was no different in this case. "The only way I can think to explain it is that I was dehydrated, and someone offered me seawater. I suspected it was seawater, but I drank it anyway, and it only made me feel worse. And that's all that I can really say, except for that I'm sorry I did it, because my drinking seawater affected both of us, not just me." She sighed. "I guess the analogy falls apart there. I'll… I'll shut up."

"You really felt that bad? After?"

Jane reached out as if to take his hand, then pulled back again, as though sensing he didn't want her to touch him right now. "It was you that I missed. And he wasn't you. All that night did was make me miss you more, and that's when I knew I had to leave Europe. I wasn't being fair to any of us by staying."

"Okay." It wasn't okay. Part of him was pretty sure it would never be okay. But he didn't want to hear Jane justify herself anymore. He only had one more question. "Did you at least use protection?"

"Yes. And I got a sexual health check when I had to head out to Australia for a couple of days, just in case. I knew I was clean when we started sleeping together again. I swear."

Kurt nodded. "Then I think we're done talking about this. As long as you're sure you don't want to go back to Europe when we've taken Roman and Crawford down, that is." He couldn't help the slight edge to his tone.

Jane shook her head. "I already burned that bridge after we got back from Germany. He offered. I turned him down. And when he sent me a text message a week later, I asked him to delete my number."

"Didn't want to be tempted?"

"I didn't want you to get the wrong idea, and I didn't want to give him any hope that we might have a future." Jane's voice was sharp. "I know you're hurting, and I accept that it was my fault, but there is no possibility that I would ever have cheated on you if I'd thought I could go home, Kurt. I'm not making excuses for what I did, but this wasn't the self-control issue that other couples go through."

"I know. That's the only reason I'm willing to work this out." He fought his anger, knowing it was just his pain that was making him lash out. Intellectually, he'd forgiven her, but emotionally he still had a way to travel.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Jane asked. "Because if you're rushing this for any reason, I can give you more time. I'm still completely in love with you, and I'm not going anywhere."

Kurt searched himself once more, gazing at his wife. Looking her infidelity in the eye had brought up the hurt again, but he could see that his pain also hurt her. Either they could continue on this loop of blame and defensiveness, or something had to give.

He took her hand. "This won't be fixed overnight. But I really have missed you, and I want to start moving forward."

Jane rested her other hand over his, and nodded. "Just lead the way, and I'll follow. Anywhere you need me to go."

Torn between wanting her to leave and wanting to re-establish the closeness between them, he again remembered Allie's words—this time, about meeting Jane halfway. After all, she'd left him before he'd refused to take her back. His actions had wounded her just as much as hers had injured him. Putting aside his instinct to push his wife away, he put his arms around her, knowing he'd made the right decision when some of the tension within him seeped away in her embrace.

He kissed the top of her head. "I love you."

"I love you. I'm so sorry." She tightened her arms around him, and from the way she tensed up, he could tell she was struggling to hold back sobs.

"I'm sorry, too." He blinked back his own tears, tilting up her chin to catch her eye. "It's okay, Jane. You don't have to hide how you feel."

She held out a moment longer, her jaw clenched stubbornly, but then she broke down, her jagged breaths hot against his shirt as her tears fell. Kurt cried with her, tears of relief, remorse and regret that washed away some of the pain of her betrayal. Jane squeezed his hand, brought it to her lips, covered it in kisses between sobs.

Slowly, they calmed down together, Kurt reaching for the box of tissues on the end table so they could compose themselves.

"I never want to lose you again," Jane whispered, stroking her fingers down his jaw. "No matter what happens, I promise, I won't run from you."

"Not even to keep me safe?" It was a test, but not a serious one. They both knew their life came with risks, that their future couldn't be foreseen.

"Not without discussing it with you first. And getting your agreement." Trepidation dawned in her eyes, as though she feared that wouldn't be enough.

He smiled. "Good answer."

Jane smiled back, then sighed. "I should probably go, right? We shouldn't push too far, too fast?"

Kurt buried his face in her neck for a second, inhaling her familiar scent. More than anything, he wanted to tell her they should go get her stuff, bring it home and go back to the way things should be. But she was right—they'd just weathered the worst period of an almost catastrophic separation. They needed to ease back into this.

"Yeah," he said, raising his head again to look at her. "That probably makes sense."

Jane nodded. "Okay." Instead of moving, she reached down inside her shirt and brought out a silver chain with something threaded through it.

"My wedding ring." His heart seemed to swell at the sight of it, and he reached out to cup the warm silver band in his palm. "You've been wearing it like this the whole time?"

"Every day since you took it off," she confirmed softly, her words similar to the ones he'd spoken back when she'd realised he'd been carrying her ring with him. "But you don't have to take it back yet, if you're not ready. I just wanted you to know I have it safe."

Kurt tried to put it back on his finger, but the chain got in the way, stopping him from getting it over the second knuckle. With a grin, he reached up and unsnagged the clasp on the necklace, then pulled the ring free and slid it back into place.

"Thank you," Jane murmured, stroking her fingertips over the ring. "This means so much to me."

He gave her a soft, loving kiss. "I think we should stop here for tonight. Let everything settle."

Jane nodded. "Okay. I'll see you at work on Monday."

She gathered her belongings, and they shared a long, restorative hug near the kitchen, reconnecting a little more with each second that passed. Then Jane stepped back and opened the door.

"Don't forget to open your drawing," she told him, and left with a wistful smile on her face.

After the door shut, Kurt took a deep breath, feeling both physically and emotionally drained, but also hopeful about their future. He crossed to where he'd hung up his jacket and removed the envelope from his pocket, then carefully tore it open.

For the first time, Jane hadn't drawn a picture of him, and he gazed down at the sketch of a woman who was at once familiar to him, but also a stranger. It wasn't until he saw the caption under the picture that he realised who the woman was supposed to be.

 _Taylor Shaw, 2018_ – _based on pictures of Taylor and Emma Shaw._

She didn't look like Jane Doe. That was just a bias his mind had constructed in order to accept Jane as Taylor. As he examined the sketch, he realised Jane must have spent a lot of time studying the photographs of Taylor and her mother, getting the features they had in common just right, and applying a mixture of analysis and imagination to the ones Taylor had inherited from her father. Kurt knew he'd think of this drawing whenever he thought of Taylor from now on. He wished Emma was alive to see it.

"Thank you, Jane," he murmured to the empty apartment.

He and his wife had their problems, but she knew him right down to his core. She'd drawn this not because Taylor and Emma were important to her, but because they were important to him. He loved her for that.


	6. Too Far

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay with my ficcing updates lately - had some bad health and some bad news, so I've been in the slow lane (relatively speaking). Here's a new chapter. :)

* * *

For the first time in a couple of months, Jane actually looked forward to heading to work that Monday. When she got to her desk, there was a paper cup of coffee already sitting by her keyboard, and as she picked it up, Kurt came out of Reade's office and approached.

"Morning," Jane said, smiling up at him. "Did you happen to see who put this here?"

"The coffee fairy," Kurt told her, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

"Hmmm… The coffee fairy is looking pretty hot today," Jane teased.

He grinned and picked up an identical cup from his own desk. "C'mon. Reade said Patterson's waiting."

A few eyebrows were raised as SIOC's staff noticed that Jane and Kurt were on friendly terms again—but in almost every case, the raised eyebrows were accompanied by smiles. Rich, in particular, let out a dramatic gasp when he noticed the less awkward atmosphere, but Patterson cleared her throat pointedly, and he closed his mouth, looking dejected.

During a lull in the case, as Jane attempted to make sense out of the stack of paper records on her desk, someone sidled up in her peripheral vision. She glanced over, then blinked up at Rich. "Hey. What's up?"

"Nothing," Rich said nonchalantly. "Just, y'know, taking a break."

"Uh-huh." Jane neatened a pile and put it aside, waiting for the inevitable.

"Could I…? Could I ask you something?" he asked.

"Is it about my marriage?" Jane didn't look up from her work, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kurt turning his head to watch them.

"Uhhh, maybe a little?"

"Then no. You can't ask me something." She was more amused than irritated, though with Rich, it was sometimes difficult to anticipate whether his behaviour would be endearing or annoying.

Rich sighed. "I know. I know you're not the kiss and tell type. I just wanted to say that I'm really happy you guys are on the mend, and if you need a male perspective, I'm more than happy to— Hi, Kurt, how's it going?"

"Good." Kurt sat on the edge of Jane's desk, a warning edge to his casual behaviour. "How about you, Rich?"

"Not too bad, thanks for asking. I kind of have this ache starting in my right shoulder, though. Anyone know a good massage therapist?"

It was hard not to admire Rich's general attitude sometimes. Nothing really seemed to faze him. Jane shot her husband a quick, amused glance, letting him know without words that he didn't need to go into protective mode.

"Sorry, can't help you," Kurt said, still friendly with that slight edge. "You should try asking someone else. Maybe someone in the lab."

"You guys are no fun," Rich said, putting on an air of dramatic rejection, and retreated.

Jane rolled her eyes. "You know he had to try it. It's impressive enough he's left me alone all this time. I don't know if he's tried anything with you."

"No. He's stayed out of our business this whole time, surprisingly enough. Makes me think Patterson's got some dirt on him, something he'd rather the human resources department didn't know about." Kurt's eyes remained on Rich until their friend had disappeared down one of the back hallways.

"Sounds about right." Jane set aside the records and looked up at him. "You busy tonight? Want to grab a drink after work?"

Her heart skipped a beat as he gave her a small, almost shy smile, one that reminded her of how they used to interact back before they'd gotten together. "Sure. Where did you want to go? Crosstown?"

Jane shook her head, though the bar he'd named was one of their favourites. "I was thinking maybe Harvey's."

Kurt gave her a surprised look. "Sure. I don't even remember the last time we stopped in there. Before we were married, right?"

Jane nodded, wondering if he'd guess the reason before they got there. "If we want to go anywhere, I guess we'd better get back to work on solving this thing."

Her husband gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head. "Point taken. Let's go see if that warrant came in yet."

* * *

Harvey's was a medium-sized bar the team used to frequent whenever Patterson bemoaned the familiar faces at the cop bars they'd usually gone to on Friday nights. "How am I supposed to find a date if everyone here is someone I've been working with all day?" she used to say. After the Borden incident, she'd stopped complaining about the cop bars, but by then, they'd all grown fond of the place and had continued visiting it.

It was probably the first time Kurt had been here since before they'd arrested Shepherd. Nothing much seemed to have changed over the last couple of years, and since it was Monday, it was quieter than usual. He glanced around nostalgically as he and Jane sat down with their drinks in a quiet corner. "This place is just the same."

She smiled, following his gaze. "Yeah. Almost makes you miss the old days, right? Chasing down Sandstorm leads, worrying about Phase Two…"

Kurt grinned. "Yeah, as much as I don't love dealing with Roman on his own, it's so much better than having Shepherd on the loose."

Jane nodded emphatically, then took a sip of her drink. "Agreed."

"So why did you want to come here, after all this time?" Knowing Jane, there had to be a reason. Kurt was curious to see where her mind was.

She gave him a slightly embarrassed smile. "I guess I was going for symbolic. This is where we were when I really started to have hope for us as a couple again, after everything that happened with finding out about Sandstorm, and who I really was. We came here after that case with the escape room and the polygraph, remember?"

As soon as she said it, he _did_ remember—the way he'd gotten slightly tipsy after that case, and with his guard still down after the way the polygraph had forced him to tell the truth, he'd told her that he'd never want to undo the time they'd spent together, no matter who'd orchestrated it or why.

"I don't know how I forgot that." He took her hand, shaking his head. "I guess what came afterward all happened in such a rush, and then that night got overshadowed in my head by us actually getting together."

"I know. It makes sense you wouldn't remember as clearly as I do." With a quick shrug, she stared down at her drink. "But before that night, I thought you were over me. Or at least, I thought you'd given up on the idea of us being together. I could hardly believe it when you leaned in to kiss me."

"What, like this?" Kurt leaned into her personal space, and she turned her face up to his with a soft smile.

"Yeah, a lot like this," she whispered, her gaze drifting down to his lips, making his pulse quicken in anticipation.

Kurt kissed her, long and slow, the way he'd wanted to that night before they'd been interrupted. Jane's lips curved against his, and he drew back to find her smiling, her eyes still closed. "I should have kissed you that night anyway," he told her. "Patterson and Tasha would have gotten the hint."

"I wasn't sure what would happen at the end of that night," Jane confessed, picking up her drink again. "If you were going to try to kiss me again. But you didn't."

"Honestly?" Kurt examined the Scotch in his glass. "I wanted to. But I knew it was pretty likely Tasha was gonna be picked up by the NYPD that night, and I didn't want to get distracted while she was undercover. Plus, I wasn't happy about that op from the start, and I knew I couldn't focus properly on you while it was bugging me. So I backed off. Temporarily."

"Almost permanently," she reminded him, with a playful nudge.

"Hey, you were the one who brought up moving to California. It wasn't like I hadn't kissed you less than twenty-four hours earlier. I figured that I'd made my move and you still wanted to go, so…"

Jane leaned against him with a sad smile. "I don't miss the days when we were afraid to tell each other how we felt."

"Me either." He tilted up her chin with a gentle hand. "I love you."

The look she gave him was filled with such affection that he didn't even need to hear the words. "I love you, too, Kurt."

A couple of drinks later, he was done trying to take things slow. "So when do I get to see where you've been living?"

Her eyebrows rose. "You want to see it? Really? It's nothing special, not like our place."

"Is that a no?" Kurt asked.

Jane shook her head. "No, I guess I'm just surprised you'd want to go there, that's all. You want to get takeout again?"

Every excuse she had to avoid cooking, Jane took, even now. With an affectionate chuckle, he kissed her cheek. "Nah. We can stop by the store on the way and I'll grab something I can cook for us. Don't worry, I'll make sure it's vegan."

"You're amazing," she told him. "I'll have to figure out some way I can thank you later."

He shut down his imagination before he could start making inappropriate suggestions in public. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

* * *

A couple of hours later, after finishing off a better vegan lasagne than she'd ever been able to make on her own—she'd come to accept that Kurt, and most of the rest of the world, would always be better at cooking than she was—Jane was snuggled up with her husband on the couch. She'd apologised for her total lack of a cable subscription, explaining that she only had a TV at all because sometimes she and Avery watched DVDs together.

"I don't care," Kurt had said, brushing her hair back from her face. "I don't need TV to entertain me, Jane. I just wanted to spend some time with you."

Right now, that seemed to mean short bouts of conversation interspersed with kisses that grew more heated every time they began again, making her wonder if this night might end up with them tangled up together in her bed. It was too soon to hope for that, she knew, but she sensed his need warring with his caution, as though he wanted her, but wasn't sure if it was too soon for that.

Jane didn't want to push him past where he was comfortable, but she was also struggling to know what he expected from her.

 _Talk to each other. Don't shut each other out._ Tasha's advice came back to her, and she knew her friend had a point.

She laced her fingers through Kurt's and looked up at him. "Is it too soon to ask you if you want to stay the night?"

He took a deep breath that shook a little, and when he met her eyes, the need in them sent a jolt of desire through her. "I've been asking myself that question, too."

"No pressure," she murmured. "I just wanted to check what you wanted."

Kurt pulled her into his lap, kissing her hard, his fingers slipping up under her shirt to tease her nipple through her sports bra. Jane gave a soft cry, arching against his touch, and he broke off with a grin. "I missed that noise."

"I missed the way you touch me," she said, nuzzling his nose with hers.

"I don't know if we're moving too fast…but we could make out a little more and see what happens."

Jane shifted in his lap until the hard ridge in his jeans was firmly pressed between her legs, cupping his face in her hands and smiling down at him. "That sounds like fun."

When she kissed him, he wrapped his arms around her waist and thrust up against her. Jane moved with him, wishing more than anything that the clothing between them would disappear, and she could take him inside her, where she all of a sudden felt so empty.

"Kurt," she whispered against his lips.

He murmured her name in return as they moved together, their slow grind simulating what they wanted to end up doing, while their lips met over and over. When she opened her eyes to see he was gazing at her, she smiled. "I want to taste you. Is that okay?"

Kurt kissed her again, emphatic enough to be an answer on its own. "More than okay."

Jane gave him another quick kiss before slipping off his lap to kneel at his feet, reaching for his belt buckle. As she unfastened his pants with one hand, she rubbed his hard cock through his jeans with the other, watching him, wanting to see the pleasure on his face when she took him in her mouth.

Just as she got his zipper down, though, Kurt tensed and grabbed her wrist, stopping her. The need and love in his expression was gone, replaced by inexplicable anger and hurt. "Stop, Jane."

A little stunned by the sudden change in his mood, Jane sat back on her heels and moved her hands to rest on his knees. "I… Kurt, what's wrong?"

He zipped up his pants and buckled his belt quickly, then shook his head, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just…still too soon, I guess."

"Okay. It's okay. I didn't mean to push you—" She put her hands in her lap, uncertain whether or not she should touch him.

"You didn't. I thought I could…" He sighed, then looked down at her, the hurt in his eyes making her heart ache. "I thought I could watch you go down on me without thinking of you doing the same thing to him, but I was wrong."

Jane got up off her knees, knowing the position probably wasn't helping him, and sat on the couch, keeping her distance in case he couldn't bear to have her touch him at all. "I'm sorry," she said softly, trying to control her voice so it didn't break. "Is there any way I can…?"

She stalled, not knowing how to finish the sentence. Make it better? _How about not cheating?_ Rewind to the way things had been before they'd started making out? _That just sounds like I'm blaming him._

"No. I guess I just need more time." He took her hand and squeezed it for a second, still hardly looking at her. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Kurt…" She bit back the protest that wanted to come, knowing she'd made this mess by damaging their sex life in the first place. "Okay. Have a good night."

He nodded, picking up his wallet and keys. "You too."

As the door closed behind him, Jane buried her head in her hands, wishing she could turn back the clock, knowing she had no one to blame but herself.


	7. Goodnight

**Author's Note:** Have a short, mostly fluffy chapter for Christmas - and happy holidays to everyone celebrating. :) We'll be back to the angst in the next chapter though, so Jeller still have a way to go until this whole mess is behind them...

* * *

"I'm sorry. I'm not doing this to be petty, or to hold it over you." Kurt had his back to her as he spoke, his hands on the kitchen counter and his shoulders high with tension.

Jane shrugged back into her shirt and swallowed the lump in her throat, waiting until she was sure her voice would be steady before saying, "I understand, Kurt. You don't have to apologise."

It had been a couple of weeks since their first disastrous attempt at intimacy, and though Kurt kept trying to push his boundaries, he still couldn't get past the mental block of imagining Jane with Clem. Initially, it hadn't seemed like too big a deal for either of them—as long as they loved each other and were rebuilding the rest of their relationship, they'd assumed the sex issue would resolve itself—but as time went on, it was becoming more and more of a strain.

Mainly because Jane knew Kurt was blaming himself.

He turned to face her, his frustration—sexual and otherwise—plain on his face. "I just want to get past this, and get on with our life together. I want to ask you to move back in here, fall asleep with you in our bed, finish up this Crawford and Roman thing, then go on a second honeymoon. But I just…"

As he shook his head, falling silent, Jane got up and joined him in the kitchen, stopping just out of arms' reach. "I'm the one at fault here. Don't put this on yourself."

"I've forgiven you in my mind, but emotionally I just can't get past this, no matter how much I want to."

Jane nodded, wishing there was something she could say.

Kurt spoke the words resonating through her own thoughts. "I'm scared this will end up breaking us."

"Me too," she whispered.

For a moment they just stood there in silence, united in pain and guilt. Then Kurt reached out, and Jane stepped forward to take his hand, grateful he was allowing her to touch him at all.

"Maybe we should stop trying to get back to normal for a while. Trying so hard to push past this is just hurting us more."

"I know," he said, not meeting her eyes.

"I think I fell in love with you before we'd even kissed. I don't need sex to be happy with you."

He let go of her hand then, and it only took a moment for Jane to make the leap of logic as to why.

"Are you scared I'll go looking for it somewhere else? Even if the rest of our relationship is good?" That hurt, even though she knew she was the one responsible for the lack of trust between them.

"I want to say no. But…a little." He sighed. "I don't want there to be any part of our relationship where you aren't getting what you need. Even if you think you're okay without it."

Jane leaned against the refrigerator, lost for words for long, awkward moments. "What do you want to do, Kurt?"

He took a breath, then appeared to bite down on whatever sharp retort he'd been about to make. "I guess…I'm gonna have to have some faith in you. And stop trying to force things back to normal too fast."

Jane nodded, relieved by his response. "That sounds like a plan."

He hesitated, then closed the distance between them to enfold her in his arms. Jane leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "I love you so much, Kurt."

"I love you, too." Kurt sighed. "And I miss you. It's not that I don't want you anymore—"

"I know that." She chanced a tiny smile up at him. "I _feel_ that. And I promise the feeling is mutual."

He took a shaky breath, obviously tempted to ask for more details, but then extricated himself from her arms and stepped back. "I think we should change the subject."

"Okay." She laughed under her breath and looked around them. "Want another beer?"

He leaned against the counter, obviously trying to distance himself. "Sure."

Glad for something to do, Jane opened the refrigerator. When she looked up again, about to hand over a beer bottle, Kurt was watching her with a touch of melancholy on his face. She didn't have to ask what he was thinking.

Once were back on the couch, he asked, "Do you want to stay over tonight? Just to sleep, I mean. I miss falling asleep next to you."

Torn, Jane took his hand and squeezed it. "I would love that. But I can see how it might…get in the way of what we just decided to do."

She'd expected him to be hurt or to get defensive. Instead, he just smiled and shrugged. "Not if we're adults about it."

"Challenge accepted."

* * *

Jane slid under the covers beside him, and Kurt pushed aside the slight apprehension he felt about tonight. They'd both agreed they'd just be sleeping, and it wasn't like they'd never gone a night in the same bed without sex before.

A brief image of Jane sleeping in Clem Hahn's arms flashed into his mind, but he pushed it away forcefully. She'd already told him she'd spent that night— _afterwards_ —with insomnia, unable to rest easy with the knowledge of what she'd done, while Hahn had slept peacefully.

Kurt had always slept on the left side of the bed in relationships, though after Jane had gone on the run, he'd taken to sleeping on her side instead. The habit had returned after she'd found out about Berlin and left him. It felt odd to be sleeping back on the left side, but in the best possible way.

Jane turned on her side and smiled at him. "What?"

His mood felt lighter just at having her here, in their bed, and in their old life together. He wanted to tell her so, but what came out was, "I missed your toothpaste breath."

It might not have been the intense, romantic comment he could have made, but Jane blinked, then burst out laughing. It turned out to be the perfect tension-breaker, and she snuggled up to him, exhaling into his face before giving him an amused peck on the lips.

"You know, sometimes it amazes me how we got here," she said, resting her head on his chest. "The first time I saw you walk into the interrogation room, I thought you looked so grim and closed off. I never would have guessed you'd be the kind of guy to say, 'I missed your toothpaste breath'."

Kurt stroked her hair absently, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "Back then, I never would have thought I'd say it either. To anyone, let alone someone I mentally classified as a…person of interest in a case."

"You can say the word 'victim', you know. I mean, technically that doesn't apply to me, since I was also the perpetrator. But we didn't know that then."

"No matter how you were involved, I had very clear boxes in my head. You were supposed to be work. A case to close, a puzzle to solve. But even before I walked back out of that room, you were already starting to break down where I thought I stood."

Jane raised her head from his chest with a sceptical expression. "I didn't have a clue what was happening that night. I couldn't possibly have done anything."

She really had no idea what a powerful effect she'd had on him, even after all this time?

"Jane. You touched me that night." He meant it figuratively, but also literally. "When I asked you to try to remember me, just in case you knew of me in your old life… No one had ever looked at me the way you did then. You didn't remember anything, but you made a connection just by trying to find one. When you reached out and touched me…" He trailed off.

"I knew I was making you uncomfortable, but you were the only lead I had to follow. I don't know why touching you came so easily to me, though. I don't think I would have done the same to Reade or Zapata, if they'd been in your place. Maybe subconsciously I knew Remi planned to connect with you."

He shook his head, dismissing that idea. "It was simpler than that. Even though you were scared and I was exhausted, we just—"

"Clicked." Jane smiled. "You really were my starting point."

"And that's why I don't try to say anything romantic, and stick with comments about toothpaste breath. You came up with the ultimate romantic statement when we hardly even knew each other." He closed his eyes, fighting the same wave of incredulity and love he always felt when he thought about that moment.

"You practically ran out of my safehouse that night," she said, amused.

"That's how you should have known you got to me." He nuzzled her neck. "In more ways than one."

Jane rolled onto her back, putting a little distance between them. There was desire in her eyes, but regret in her voice as she told him, "I think we should go to sleep, before this goes somewhere we agreed it wouldn't."

It was on the tip of his tongue to suggest that they try continuing the trip down memory lane regardless, but he knew she was right. The atmosphere was good now, but it had been the same earlier, before his traitorous imagination had ruined things again. There was no way to tell what would make the moment sour, and he didn't want that to happen in their bed. Not tonight.

"Goodnight, Jane," he said softly, shifting into his usual sleeping position, on his side, facing away from her.

Behind him, he heard Jane rolling onto her front, the way she always slept when they didn't fall into a doze while spooned together. One of her arms brushed against his back, the only contact between them, but familiar enough to make his heart expand.

"Goodnight," she murmured.


	8. Mental Block

**Author's Note:** First update of the new year, yay! It's sexy and it's angsty. Kurt and Jane still have a little more to work through, unfortunately... And yes, I know Roman would probably be dead of ZIP poisoning if Jeller took this long to work everything out, but I have stretched the timeline out yet more weeks, and I make no apologies. :)

* * *

Kurt woke to the familiar warmth and scent of Jane in his arms, her back against his chest and her ass nestled against his morning wood. Everything was perfect.

He kissed the back of her neck, and she took a deep breath as she stirred into semi-consciousness, which became a yawn. "Morning," she murmured, pulling his arm more securely around her and wriggling back against him.

Kurt groaned softly at the unintentional friction against his hard-on, rubbing against her before he could stop himself. With a sleepy laugh, she pushed back provocatively, letting him know she'd be open to more.

His mind was still mired in sleep, slow to function, and his body called the shots as he stroked his fingers over the front of her underwear.

Jane inhaled shakily and pushed her hips forward against his touch, then back against his cock. As she fell into a rhythm that his own hips quickly synchronised with, he worked his hand inside her underwear and revelled in her moan as he wet his fingers and moved them up to her clit.

"Mmmm…" She tried to turn her head to look back at him, only managing to expose a new section of her neck for him to kiss. "Want you."

He wanted her too, so much that he couldn't think. He somehow managed to work her panties down her thighs, and as Jane got them the rest of the way off her legs, he did the same to his boxer-briefs.

Jane's breath caught as he positioned himself at her entrance, still spooned against her back. She hooked one of her feet back over his leg, giving him better access to sink into her tight heat. The blankets fell away as he began to take her slowly, gauging her response to him, adjusting his angle to hit just the right spot. His wife made a soft, pleading sound as he found it, and he allowed his urgency to take over, his own pleasure increasing with every sign that she was getting closer to losing control.

They rocked together with mounting desperation, Jane sighing his name and clutching at the pillow, Kurt putting his fingers back to work between her thighs, needing her to tip over the edge before he could follow. The sheer, primal satisfaction of her body shaking through a powerful orgasm made him groan, enjoying the rippling of her inner muscles around his cock.

"Now. Come now," Jane ordered, digging her fingers into his hip, and he was powerless to do anything else, his body obeying as though he'd needed her command in order to release. His mind, too hazy with pleasure to process anything but the present moment, went completely blank as waves of white-hot ecstasy drowned him in sensation.

When he came back to himself, Jane was whispering how much she'd loved him, how much she'd missed him. And with those words—that she'd missed him—he remembered why they'd been apart, the last vestiges of sleep and the instinctive drive for sex finally fading.

He eased back from Jane, rolling onto his back, and she turned over to snuggle up to him, giving him a smile that should have warmed him.

 _Did she look at_ him _this way when they were done? Did she lean over to kiss him and then rest her head on his chest, closing her eyes while he held her?_

It took Jane less than five seconds to register his tension and silence, and the moment she looked up into his face again, her face fell into concern and dismay, and she rose up on one elbow to give him a little space.

"Oh, Kurt, I'm sorry… If I'd known your heart wasn't in this, I never would have—"

He sat up against the headboard, giving a small shake of his head. "It's not that. I mean, I wasn't thinking about it until…after."

Relief flashed across her face, but didn't last long. "I'm so sorry. I should have stopped it when we started, I just thought that maybe this time it would be different, and—"

Kurt sighed. "It's not your fault. I started it. After I said I wouldn't."

Jane sat up too, pushing the strap of her vest top back into place distractedly. "The problem isn't that we had sex, Kurt. The sex was more than welcome."

"For me, too," he admitted, though he couldn't look at her.

"Then what's going through your head?" she asked softly. "Maybe I can help."

He hesitated, then reminded himself that shutting her out would only cause more problems. "I started wondering what it was like for him, getting to hold you afterwards. Knowing that you'd chosen to be with him, that he'd satisfied you—"

Jane shook her head slowly. "He got me off. Barely. But he didn't satisfy me. He only made me miss you more—"

Her admission that she'd orgasmed with Hahn sent a spike of fresh hurt through him. "Just…don't," he said, unable to control the harsh note in his voice.

Jane fell silent, her eyes downcast. He could already tell she was blaming herself, but this was his fault. He hadn't been ready for this much intimacy, but he'd let his body overrule his brain and now he and his wife were both suffering.

"I think we were right last night. Keeping sex out of the equation is…probably best, for now."

Jane nodded. "Do you want me to go?"

More than anything, he wanted her to stay, but even as he longed to draw her into his arms, he knew he'd just be leaving the door cracked open to making even more mistakes.

"I don't want you to leave, but I think it would be better if you did."

"Okay." Her guard up now, Jane reached under the blankets for her underwear and pulled it on, then got out of bed.

As she moved around the room, locating the clothing she'd taken off last night, Kurt rubbed his eyes wearily and pulled on his own underwear. Once she was ready to leave, he got out of bed and saw her to the door.

"I was going to draw your weekly sketch before I left, but now I guess…" Jane shrugged sadly, and he realised it was Saturday morning, and she would have to come back later if she wanted him to get the sketch today, like all the others.

"You can give it to me on Monday," he said, and the disappointment in her expression grew deeper at the realisation that he didn't want to see her before they both had to work again.

"Okay. I hope the rest of your weekend is…better than now." She opened the door, then gave him a light touch on his bare arm before stepping backward. "I love you. Bye."

"Bye." He wanted to pull her close, tell her again how sorry he was, how much he'd enjoyed their night and morning together before he'd ruined it. But his body refused to obey his commands. He could only close the door behind her and lean against it with a sigh, wishing like hell that he could just excise the jealous, insecure part of himself and leave it behind.

* * *

"Goddamn it, Rich, could you stop talking about sex for five seconds?"

The words emerged louder and more infuriated than he'd meant, and Kurt bit back a curse as Rich froze, the cogs in his head turning until he reached a conclusion and—

"That was spoken an awful lot like you're a man who hasn't gotten any for quite some time, Agent Weller."

They were mercifully alone in the conference room, sifting through boxes and boxes of old paper records dropped off by NYPD. Another couple of weeks had passed since Jane had stayed over, and their relationship was becoming more strained with each day that passed. Even so, Kurt didn't want to have this conversation—not with Rich Dotcom, the King of Inappropriate Comments.

"I thought you and Jane still had a vibe of something not quite right, even though you're kind of back together now. What is it, performance problems? Because they have a little blue pill for that, it's really not a big deal in the twenty-first century—"

Unable to let that misconception stand, Kurt scowled over at Rich. "It's _not_ performance problems, okay?"

"But it _is_ a sex issue? I knew it." Rich looked as though he'd won the lottery, and it took all of Kurt's patience to continue sorting records, placing them into the appropriate piles instead of shoving them down Rich's throat.

"Is it something kinky that one of you wants to do and the other doesn't? Because you know, if you just try it one time, you might be surprised how much you like it. There was this time Boston wanted to—"

"Just stop, please." Kurt groaned and leaned over the table. With the way Rich's imagination worked, he was going to come to some wild and outlandish conclusion that he refused to believe wasn't the case, unless Kurt derailed the crazy train with the truth.

Resigned to it, he sat down with a sigh. "This does _not_ leave this room, understand?"

Rich pulled up a chair close by and sat down as well, leaning forward earnestly. "My lips are sealed. As are my typing fingers."

 _Am I really going to tell Rich this?_ Kurt was surprised to realise that he wanted to. If anyone could shed a little light on his mental block, Rich was a likely candidate. "Jane cheated on me, back in Europe."

Rich's face fell. " _No._ But…but…you're the perfect couple! You're Kurt and Jane, FBI, crime-fighting, husband and wife team!"

"No such thing as a perfect couple, Rich." Wearily, Kurt tried to massage pain out of his neck.

"Who is he? I will murder him with my bare hands—"

Unexpectedly touched by Rich's concern, Kurt shook his head. "Not important. She's promised she won't ever be seeing him again. And that kind of thing? It takes two, so if you want to murder him, you'd have to go after Jane, too."

"I can't believe Jane would do something like this." Rich shook his head slowly. "She loves you. She's always loved you. That's blatantly obvious. I've been telling you that from the start, remember? Even before you admitted it to yourself, I knew that."

"Yeah, I know." Kurt couldn't help but smile a little at the memory of Rich adamantly insisting that they belonged together. "But she didn't think she could come home again. The bounty hunters would have gone after me and Bethany if she had. So when the guy made a pass at her, she took him up on it. Regretted it afterwards."

"Of course she regrets it." Rich rolled his eyes. "You're Kurt Weller. The only man for her, just like I've always said. But being cheated on, it hurts. Trust me, I know. You need some time to forgive and forget, I get it."

"I've already forgiven her. It's just the forgetting that's the hard part," Kurt confessed.

Rich frowned, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "That's where the lack of sex comes in? You're in comparison hell, wondering whose is bigger, whose technique is better?"

Kurt sighed. "Not exactly, but…you're in the ballpark. I think of her with him, and then I have to get some distance. It's like a mental block."

"A mental cock-block, if you will." Rich grinned, but at Kurt's scowl, returned to seriousness. "I'm sorry. I know this is a big deal. I can tell you and Jane are struggling."

"I need to get over this. I know why she did it. I know the circumstances were…impossible. I'm pretty sure she won't do it again. But I can't move past this, and it's hurting us both."

"Forgive _me_ for saying it, but it doesn't sound like you've forgiven _her_."

Kurt looked up, ready to argue, but Rich shook his head, silencing him with a hand over his own heart. "I mean, in here."

Frustrated, Kurt got up and picked up the inventory sheet, needing to keep busy. "I can change how I think about it, but I can't change how I feel, Rich. It's gonna hurt for a long time."

"True. True. And I can't just tell you to get over it. But when I was cheated on, it took him giving up on reconciliation for me to realise it wasn't an issue anymore. And by then, it was too late. I couldn't persuade him to come back." Rich shrugged sadly. "Are you trying to punish her, or both of you, or is it something else, some deep-rooted childhood trauma coming to the surface?"

"I don't know." Helplessly, Kurt swallowed the lump in his throat. _God, don't let me cry in front of Rich. He will_ never _let me live it down._

"I'm gonna go make some coffee," Rich said, and touched Kurt's shoulder for an instant before moving away. "You want some?"

Honestly surprised by the compassion and empathy Rich was showing him, Kurt took a deep breath to pull himself together. "Yeah, that'd be good."

"Back in a few." Rich headed for the door.

"Rich?" Kurt added, forcing himself to look up from the paperwork.

Rich hesitated, his hand on the glass and a questioning look on his face.

"Thanks."

With a subdued smile, Rich left the conference room.


	9. Unexpected Events

**Author's** **Note:** I've been rewatching season one again recently, and my love for Sarah Weller still knows no bounds. So I wanted to somehow squish her into this fic to weigh in on Kurt's marital problems, and it kind of works with my overall plan, so here's the set-up for that bit. Oh, and also Rich being Rich (at Jane, this time!).

* * *

"Janiecakes, I need a word with you."

Jane sighed and replaced the mug she'd just rinsed out back in the cupboard. "Okay, Rich —one: never call me Janiecakes again. And two: can it wait until tomorrow? I'm attempting to cook for Avery tonight, and I have a feeling it'll take me a couple of failures to come up with something that tastes even halfway decent."

Rich seemed uncharacteristically serious as he shut the door to SIOC's kitchenette area behind him. "Kurt told me you cheated."

Jane froze in the middle of drying her hands on a dish towel, fighting a wave of hurt. Sure, she'd told Patterson and Zapata, and Kurt had told Reade, but that had been in the aftermath of Kurt refusing to take her back, when they'd both been devastated and in need of support. It had been months now, and they were back together, though still having problems. Why had Kurt spilled the beans to Rich now, and what had he hoped to gain from it?

"Okay," she said guardedly. "That's something I would have preferred not to have anyone else know."

"Don't take it out on Kurt. He only told me what was bugging him after I insinuated he might be…well, to be blunt, having trouble getting it up."

Jane leaned against the counter with a groan. "Please, Rich, don't antagonise him. He's not in a good place right now."

"And whose fault is that?" Rich shot back. "Really, Jane? You have the most attractive, considerate, ass-kicking husband anyone could wish for. If he were single, and the least bit interested, I'd snap him up so fast, you'd only see a blur before the orgasmic moaning started."

"Did you just come in here to lecture me, Rich?" Jane asked wearily, battling a fresh spike of guilt. "Kurt might be comfortable discussing our marriage with you, but I'm not."

"Oh, I didn't corner you to talk about your incredibly bad life choices," Rich said. "Though they are _incredibly_ bad. I'm here to talk sex strategy."

Had she thought this conversation could get any more unwelcome? She'd been wrong. "You've been trying to butt into my sex life with Kurt since before we even had one, and we've both told you to stop. Why would this time be any different?"

"Because Kurt told me about his mental block when you guys get hot and heavy, and it's extremely obvious that this little problem is dragging your whole marriage into a flatline. You need to think outside the box to get past this. You need a sex counsellor."

"And that would be you?" As much as Jane hated to admit it, Rich had a point. Not about the 'sex counsellor' part, but their sexual issues were drastically affecting the marriage they were trying so desperately to save. She'd do anything to move them past this—even if it involved talking about sex with Rich.

"I mean, I'm not a qualified sex counsellor, but I've had a lot of sex, with a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways, so…" Rich sat down at the small table in the middle of the room and clasped his hands in front of him. "Kurt said he thinks of you with the other guy and that's where the problem is, right?"

"Right." Jane still wasn't comfortable with this conversation, but Rich had always seemed to be tuned in to her wavelength with Kurt, as strange as that was. She could do worse than talk about this with her foe-turned-friend, assuming he could keep his mouth shut. "Listen, Rich, I need to know that this isn't gonna be all over the building by this time tomorrow."

"Like I told Kurt earlier, my lips and typing fingers are sealed. Just tell me if there's any particular moments that he keeps having to get some distance from you. I'm assuming first base is fine. What about second?"

Jane sighed and gave serious consideration to the question, recalling all the times Kurt had been too hurt to continue, and hadretreated from her mentally and physically. "It's usually when he looks at me. I think he sees me about to do…whatever, and he imagines me doing it to—" She stopped herself from naming Clem. "—the other guy."

"That makes sense. Guys tend to be more visual, they like to watch what their partner is doing. There's this one guy I slept with, he literally couldn't get off unless he could watch my—"

"Rich? Stop."

Rich rolled his eyes. "You can't be as prudish as you seem to be in all the conversations we've had about sex. Please tell me there's more to your sex life than a scheduled weekly half-hour in the missionary position. You don't even have to go into specifics—just give me some hope for you, here."

Remembering some of the hours-long, breathtaking, impromptu sex she and Kurt had enjoyed, Jane bit back a smile. "You really don't have to worry, Rich." Then her amusement faded. "Assuming we get past this, I mean."

Rich shook his head. "It should tell you something that I'm not trying to press you for details on that right now. I really do just want you guys to heal and move on from this. Even if you won't let me have that threesome."

"Kurt gets caught up in what I did when he looks at me. That's really all I can think to tell you. It's not a specific thing I do or he does, it's not when we get past a certain set point in foreplay… We've tried different things trying to work past this, and the only time it worked was just after he woke up, when he was still half asleep. And then when we were done, he looked at me and his mind went straight back to…what I did."

"Hmm…" Rich seemed to be filing everything away in his mind—hopefully not for recollection during a personal moment later. Jane cringed just thinking about it.

"You better have a suggestion for me, because I did _not_ want to tell you about this," she said, a little sharply.

"I have a suggestion. Relax." Rich grinned. "Actually, I have a lot of suggestions, if you're open to them, but only one specific one that might help in this case. But first, something I was thinking of suggesting anyway. If you have any virginities left, you could consider offering them up to Kurt. You know, 'this is something I've never done with anyone else; I want to do it with you'. That kind of idea. So if you have any holes left unplundered…"

As he began to elaborate on a wild series of kinky events, Jane regretted even agreeing to listen to him—until she threatened to drown him in the kitchen sink, and he actually told her what he had in mind for her to try with Kurt.

Then she began to think things might work out, after all.

* * *

Kurt had just given up on the book he'd been staring at—but not reading—for the past hour, when his cell phone vibrated a text alert from the coffee table. Smiling a little as he noticed Jane's name on the screen, he picked up the phone.

 _I had an interesting conversation with Rich earlier…_

He sighed, mentally kicking himself. He'd meant to warn Jane that Rich now knew about her indiscretion and their intimacy problems, but then they'd come across an important lead that had sent him in one direction and Jane in the other. By the time things calmed down and he'd gone in search of her, she'd already headed off to prepare for her dinner date with Avery.

 _Sorry_ , he texted back. _Meant to warn you earlier, but things got busy. How pissed at me are you, exactly?_

She replied quickly. _Actually, not very. He was weirdly reassuring. And wildly inappropriate, but that was no shock._

Kurt relaxed a little. _I know what you mean,_ he replied. _He really does actually care about us. Never would have thought it when we first went undercover._

Jane's response included an eye-rolling emoji. _On the one hand, yes. On the other, he won't ever get a threesome with us if we break up, so don't make him out to be selfless…_

Kurt began to text emphatically that he wouldn't be getting a threesome with them under any circumstances, but was interrupted by a phone call. Assuming it was Jane at first, he grinned, but then his gut instinct that something was wrong kicked in.

The caller ID read 'Sarah', but his sister usually called on weekends, if she called at all.

He hit the answer button quickly. "Sarah? You okay?"

"Uncle Kurt, it's me."

"Sawyer, what's up? Why are you calling on your mom's phone, bud?" Kurt sat forward, tensely waiting for an answer.

"Mine's dead and I don't have a charger," Sawyer said, his voice stressed and a little slurred. "Mom and I had a car accident. I woke up but she's still asleep. They had to do some surgery on her."

Alarmed, Kurt sprang to his feet. "Are you okay? Is anyone with you? Did they say anything about your mom's condition?"

"My head and neck kinda hurt, and my chest has a big bruise from the seatbelt, but I think I'm okay. Uh…I called Mom's boyfriend, Mark. He's on his way. I don't know him very well, but he seems nice. And I called my friend Jaden. He's coming over with his mom, too."

Knowing Sarah never introduced her son to her boyfriends unless she was a hundred percent sure the relationship was going to last a while, and that the guy was solid, Kurt relaxed slightly. "Okay, buddy. You tell the nurses if you start to feel worse, okay? And can you put the nurse at the desk on the phone with me? I want to get an update on your mom."

At the end of the phone call, after reassuring Sawyer that his mom wouldn't be getting any worse, and that he'd be flying out to see him as soon as he could, Kurt made himself stop pacing and sat down. He was about to call up the browser on his phone to book a flight when he noticed another text from Jane.

 _You okay? You went quiet._

Electing to use his laptop to book a flight instead, he quickly called Jane. "Hey. Sorry about that. Just got some bad news from Portland."

He heard Jane suck in a concerned breath. "Oh, god… Is it Sarah or Sawyer?"

"Both. They were in a car accident. Sarah's still under after surgery, they think she'll be fine, but I want to head out there and check on them."

"I'll come with you," Jane offered immediately.

He was already browsing through the flight list, looking for the soonest he could make. "No, you should stay here."

He read Jane's distress in her silence, and before she could formulate a protest, he added, "It's not that I don't want you around, but one of us leaving New York isn't too bad. If Roman notices us both going, he's gonna wonder why, and I do _not_ want him looking too hard at my sister or nephew. Not knowing what he's capable of." _What he did to Emma Shaw._

Jane's voice shook a little. "What if he forced them off the road to get you out of New York, to separate us?"

The thought had fleetingly crossed his mind. "Sawyer didn't say anything about an aggressive driver, but I'll check into it when I get there, keep you posted."

"If this was him, I swear to god, I'll…"

"Not if I get there first." He finished entering his card details into the site, tapping his fingers against the edge of the laptop as he waited for the verification. "Just carry on as normal, okay? We need to keep moving towards Crawford."

"We'll handle it, don't worry." Jane sighed. "I just want to be there for you."

"I know. Thank you." He smiled a little, despite the situation. "I should go pack if I'm gonna make my flight. I love you."

"I love you, too," she said, her voice heartfelt. "Update me when you can, okay?"

"Will do. Bye."

Five minutes later, his go bag slung over his shoulder, Kurt was heading for the apartment door, bound for JFK.


	10. Checking In

**Author's Note:** I'm not a huge fan of this chapter - it's kind of filler and set-up at the same time - but hey. Next chapter will have undercover Jane and Kurt freaking out when things go wrong, so... ;D

* * *

"You really didn't have to come all the way out here," Sarah said, her voice a little slurred from the pain meds. Her smile was as bright as ever, though. "I'm so embarrassed."

"What kind of brother would I be if I'd stayed in New York? You were unconscious, Sawyer called me… Plus when he mentioned your new boyfriend was gonna be around, I knew I had to make sure he was suitable."

Sarah snorted. "Name one guy I've dated that you've ever approved of. Even a member of your own FBI team, who went on to become the Assistant Director after you, didn't make the cut."

Letting the remark about Reade slide—by the time Kurt had found out the reason behind his sister's broken heart, Sarah had already moved on, and at Reade's request, he hadn't told her the truth—Kurt grinned and settled back in his chair. "It's a big brother's job to judge every guy his little sister dates."

"And it's a little sister's job to not give a rat's ass what her big brother thinks." Sarah rolled her eyes. "I love Mark. He's funny, he stops me from overthinking things, and he's good with Sawyer. _And_ he cooks."

Kurt had to admit that he hadn't noticed any red flags, and it was a relief to see Sarah happy, if a little banged up. He planned to fly home tomorrow, now that he'd been able to check on his family with his own eyes. Before he went, though, he wanted to make absolutely sure that Roman hadn't been involved in the crash, which would involve coordinating with the local police department for CCTV footage.

Not that he planned to tell Sarah that. As far as she was concerned, he was just giving it twenty-four hours to make certain neither she nor Sawyer had any unforeseen complications after the crash and surgery.

"So how's Jane?" Sarah asked. "I got the sense things weren't great when I talked to you last month."

Kurt stretched his arms over his head, sighing. "She wanted to come out here, but the case we're working is pretty big, and we couldn't both get the time off."

"That's not what I asked." Sarah frowned. "Are you guys having issues? Now that she's home and the bounty's off her head, I thought you two would be over the moon."

Resigned to talking about it—at least in generalities—Kurt shrugged. "We both were keeping some secrets about the time we spent apart. But then it all came out anyway, and now we're trying to figure out how to rebuild."

"Wanna talk about it?" His sister reached over and touched his arm reassuringly, then winced and got more comfortable in the hospital bed.

"Rather not. It's more complicated than your head injury could handle, anyway," he teased.

It had been hard enough getting Sarah to forgive Jane—she'd seen her as someone who wasn't actually Taylor Shaw, but whose arrival had torn open all of their family's wounds. Kurt had left Jane's terrorist history out of things—it was classified information, whether or not he'd wanted to tell his sister about it—and had told Sarah only that his wife-to-be didn't remember much about her past, and that she'd made use of her Special Ops training to help them take down the terrorists who'd wanted them to believe she was Taylor.

After he and Jane had been married, Sarah had finally forgiven her, seeing how happy they were together, despite her own misgivings. Kurt didn't want to complicate her relationship with his wife by telling her Jane had been unfaithful. And how was he supposed to explain the Berlin situation without getting into who Roman was and why he'd set Kurt up?

"I'm sorry you came out here while your marriage is in a bad place. You should fly home now, tell Jane you love her, do all the things I'm in denial that you've ever actually done, because you're my brother. Forgive each other for everything you've done to hurt each other, and go back to being sickeningly in love. 'Cause tomorrow, who knows what could happen?"

Kurt had learned during Jane's long absence to limit his thoughts on what tomorrow might bring. Maybe he'd pushed them out of his head a little too hard. At his sister's words, he imagined Jane unconscious in a hospital bed, injured during a case while they were still living in separate apartments, uncertain of their future.

It was more than he could bear to think about.

Kurt stood up. "I'll get Sawyer home and taken care of. Tomorrow I'll bring him by to check on you before I go home, okay?"

"Thanks, Kurt." Sarah smiled, though she was becoming more visibly in pain by the second. "It's good to see you, even if it's because I got hit by a truck."

"That a hint that I should come visit more often?" he teased.

"Yeah. Bring Jane. And stop by Colorado on the way to pick up my adorable little niece. How is she, by the way?"

Kurt shook his head, smiling so Sarah knew it wasn't because there was bad news. "I'll tell you tomorrow. You look like you need morphine and sleep."

"You'd look like crap too, if you were me." Sarah waved him off, but he kissed the top of her head anyway. "Go. I think Sawyer's decided he's too old for Uno Attack these days, but he'll probably try to rope you into something on the PS4 or whatever."

Knowing he was in for another round of teasing when his aim with a digital gun was nowhere near as accurate as his actual firearm proficiency, Kurt left in search of his nephew.

* * *

Jane had been anxiously waiting for Kurt to call with an update, and sighed with relief when her cell phone rang.

"That Kurt?" Avery asked curiously, her mouth half full of vegan burger.

"Yeah. Sorry, I should probably—"

Avery rolled her eyes and made shooing motions, swallowing her mouthful. "And adults call teenagers bad."

Amused, Jane headed into her temporary apartment's tiny bedroom and hit 'answer'. "Hey. How are they?"

"All things considered, not in bad shape." Kurt's voice filled her heart with warmth. It seemed strange to her that not so long ago, all she'd felt when she heard him speak was a numbed, distant despair at the knowledge that she'd never meet her only child.

Now that only child was stuffing her face in the living room, it was impossible to imagine that blame and desolation she'd felt returning. She missed her husband dearly, but even now, with their marriage still on the mend and hundreds of physical miles between them, she felt her spirits lift as he filled her in on the situation there.

"And Roman?" she asked. "Any sign he was behind the crash?"

"Nope. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. Sarah's car just happened to be the one in the way when the road turned and he didn't."

Jane exhaled hard. She hadn't realised just how worried she'd been about the possibility that Roman had orchestrated the whole thing. "I'm so glad."

"You sound more stressed than I was. Everything okay?"

Jane sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her reflection in the vanity mirror. "Yeah, I, um…" _Just get it over with._ "I think I might be undercover when you get back. It could take a couple of days."

She could imagine him sitting forward, every speck of attention focused on her words. "Did Patterson crack a new tattoo? What's the undercover assignment?"

"Would you listen if I said you really would be happier not knowing?" Jane asked, though she could already guess the answer.

"Now you _have_ to tell me."

"I figured." She sighed. "It's to do with trafficking kids. From newborns right up to teenagers. The links to HCI Global are only very distant, but everything helps us build a case, I guess. There's everything from illegal adoptions to…things I'd rather not think about."

"Shit." Kurt's voice was heavy, sombre, and she knew he was thinking not only about Taylor, but about his own daughter.

"Yeah." She didn't say 'I told you so'. There was no point.

"Anyone going undercover with you?"

She closed her eyes, readying herself for the avalanche. "No. Just me. I'll have a discreet tracker and a bug in my clothing that records audio, but no comms." And she might have to ditch what she did have at the first sign that she'd be swept for bugs, but she wasn't going to mention that.

"That is _way_ too risky. Jane—"

"I know. But it's time-sensitive, and I've done risky before. I know what I'm doing and if I can save even a few of these kids…"

He was silent, clearly trying to think of another way. But as she'd thought, he didn't ask her not to go undercover—not with kids' futures on the line.

"You really can't take someone else in for backup?"

"Not this time. I'm going in posing as someone we just caught; a maternity ward nurse who was planning on stealing a whole shift's worth of babies. She's already been told to come alone."

As usual, her husband was right on her wavelength. "This is pretty close to home for you, Jane."

"It wasn't a maternity nurse who stole Avery, but…yeah. It's bringing up some stuff." She met her reflection's eyes determinedly. "But that's why I have to shut this ring down. All those parents who'd never see their kids again—I just can't stand to think about it."

"Me either." He hesitated, then told her, "I know I don't need to tell you to be careful, but I'm going to anyway. I can't lose you, Jane."

"I love you, too," she said, unable to stop herself from smiling.

"Good. 'Cause I wanted to ask you to move back into our place by the time I got back, but if you're gonna be undercover, I guess it'll have to be a little later."

"Really?" She looked around the rental apartment's bedroom, so plain and functional compared to their cosy bedroom back home. "But what about—"

"Even if one of us sleeps on the couch for a while, we can work something out. I think we've been living apart long enough." His voice was steady, without a trace of doubt.

Maybe the extra distance was making him rethink things, or maybe it was seeing Sarah in the hospital, but whatever it was, Jane welcomed the change in him.

"We can talk about it some more when I come back from this assignment," she promised. "And we should probably talk about the bedroom advice I got from Rich yesterday, too."

"Yeah? Should I be intrigued, or terrified?" His voice was amused.

"I was planning to keep the terrifying stuff buried at the back of my memory, maybe take a little more ZIP to be sure of forgetting it. Especially the stuff involving latex masks." She couldn't help but shudder at the thought.

"I'm starting to regret talking to him about this."

"It's not all bad. Trust me." Thinking about the suggestions she _could_ use, Jane got up and searched her closet for possible items that might help.

"I do. Trust you, I mean. It might not always seem like it, but—"

"I know. I—"

A knock on her bedroom door interrupted her. "Heads up—I'm starting dessert without you," Avery called.

"Be right there," Jane told her, and returned her attention to the phone. "Sorry. Avery's gonna eat all the vegan brownies if I don't go now."

Kurt laughed. "Go get your sugar rush. And be careful tomorrow, okay?"

After exchanging I-love-yous, they ended the call, and Jane returned to the living room to find a quarter of the brownies already gone.

"Everything all right?" Avery asked, between mouthfuls.

Grabbing a couple of brownies for herself, Jane nodded. "Kurt's sister and nephew are doing okay. Did I mention I'm going undercover tomorrow? I might be out of touch for a few days."

"This to do with Crawford?" her daughter said, suddenly tense.

"Only very marginally. It all adds to the case on him, though. I'm sorry, I know you want him brought down now, but cases like this take—"

"Time. Yeah. I know." Avery sighed. "I started teaching one of the agents from my detail German the other day. That's how bored I am."

"Think you might want to go into teaching after college?"

Successfully diverting the conversation away from Crawford, Jane got the feeling that if they didn't find a promising lead to take him down soon, Avery would either implode or slip her detail to find her own leads—and if that happened, she might run into Roman again.

Jane filed away the problem to discuss with Kurt—and Avery—when this case was over. First, she had a child-trafficking ring to take down.


	11. Undercover Fears

**Author's Note:** Sorry it's been forever since I updated! This past couple of weeks has really done a number on my health (which is why this chapter is so short - I already had most of it written and I just wanted to get it out there so I could feel l'd achieved something!). Next chapter, Kurt plays the waiting game with Avery, and Jane has to harden her heart to do her job...

* * *

"You sure you want to do this, Jane? Under the circumstances—I mean, with what you went through with Avery—if you'd rather Tasha or Patterson went…" Reade frowned at her, concerned.

"I'll be fine, Reade. Thanks." Jane finished applying thick makeup to her bird tattoo, as Zapata obscured the oil derricks on the back of her neck. "How do I look? Think I'll pass for Penny Yates?"

"As long as they've never seen Yates before, I think you're good." Zapata handed over the sponge wedge she'd been using with a quick smile. "I'm not a huge fan of you as a blonde, though."

Jane pulled a face at her in the locker room mirror. "Me either. I'm dying this straight back when this op is over."

"You should try a different colour. Dark, but different. Like really dark, brownish red, or blue-black," Tasha suggested.

"Maybe. That would mean I'd have to go shopping for dye, though. I've already got basic black in my bathroom cabinet." Jane tugged on her frumpy, patterned blouse, sighing. "This looks like something Patterson used to wear before you gave her a fashion intervention."

Tasha snickered, while Reade gestured towards the door. "Speaking of Patterson, she's gonna drive you to a few blocks away from the rendezvous point. She's got your bug and whatever all ready to go. Just don't die on us, Jane. God knows it'd be hard enough explaining that to Kurt, let alone Avery."

After promising to be careful, Jane went in search of Patterson in the parking garage. Her friend grinned as she put the car into gear. "That outfit is so unflattering. And I think I used to own that blouse."

Jane grinned. "It's based on stuff we took from Yates' own closet. Anything out of place?"

Patterson braked at the corner, waiting to turn into traffic, then gave her a quick once-over. "Wedding ring."

"Oh. Shit." With a pang of regret, Jane switched her ring from her left hand to her right—Yates was a divorcée. "Thanks for the catch."

"We could have done this without you, you know. The undercover operation, I mean."

"I know. But Zapata isn't FBI and—no offence—you're better in the lab."

"None taken. I do kick ass in the lab." Patterson smiled a little. "You told Kurt you're going undercover, right? When you spoke to him last night?"

Jane nodded. "Yeah. He…wasn't wild about me going in without backup."

"None of us are," Patterson said seriously. "If not for the kids, I'd suggest going in with a full SWAT team at your back, just use force. These guys are heavily armed and extremely paranoid, Jane."

"Just… If I go dark, and I probably will, give me room to improvise. Forty-eight hours, that's all I'm asking. Yates said the shipments of kids go out on alternate Fridays, right? It's Tuesday today, and they want me to observe their operations for a few days _this_ week so they can bring Yates in after she burns her bridges at the hospital she works at. Which is _next_ week."

"Who would _do_ something like that?" Patterson wondered aloud. "Sedate and steal a bunch of newborn babies so they can be sold on the adoption black market?"

Jane shook her head. "Not anyone who's ever had their own, that's for sure." She sighed. "Anyway, if I can get enough intel on where they get the kids, and where they send them, by Thursday noon, that's enough time to raid the place before we lose the kids they've gathered up for this shipment."

"And if we don't hear from you by Thursday noon?" Patterson asked softly.

"Assume I can't get away, and tell SWAT that child hostages are likely." Jane buried her face in her hands. "God, I can't believe I just said that."

"Just do what you can, Jane." Patterson touched her shoulder briefly. "You're just one person."

Wishing she could shake her nerves, Jane nodded. "Yeah, I know. Just…keep Kurt on a leash for as long as you can? Give me room to work."

Patterson groaned. "That's gonna be tough, but I will do my best."

 _I'm sorry, Kurt. I need to do this, for all the parents and kids involved in this thing._ Jane rubbed the spot where her wedding ring usually sat, then the opposite finger, where it now rested. _Please understand._

* * *

Kurt sent a text to Jane as soon as he landed at JFK, not really expecting an answer, but needing something to do with his hands while he waited for the rows before him to disembark the plane. _God, I hope she's safe._

He followed it with a text to Patterson. _How's the undercover mission going?_

By the time he was off the plane, his worst fears had been confirmed. _She went dark a few hours ago. Don't freak out. We knew this was likely._

Kurt tucked his phone back into his pocket halfway through a harshly worded message to Reade, took a shaky breath to calm himself, then concentrated on getting clear of the airport. As the taxi joined hundreds of other cars bound for Brooklyn, he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

 _Would she have gone on this mission if we were in a better place?_ Part of him instantly dismissed the notion—trying to stop Jane from helping people was always a futile effort, no matter how good their relationship was. But the fear for her safety didn't feel all that different from the fear of losing her because of their marital issues. He still found it difficult to breathe when he remembered what being without her was like.

When he got home, tired and stressed, he noticed a familiar brand of envelope on the coffee table, addressed to him. Dropping his luggage on the floor, he picked up Jane's message and opened it.

 _Kurt,_

 _I'm sorry I couldn't be here to meet you when you got home. Whatever I'm doing right now, with these awful people, just know that I miss you. I'll come back to you as soon as I can, and I'm so glad Sarah and Sawyer are okay._

 _Could you look in on Avery for me tomorrow? She's trying to play it cool, but I can tell she's worried. She could do with some reassurance from someone who's not me, I think._

 _I'll be telling Patterson to tell you this, but here it is from me, too: please, don't come rushing in if I go dark. I need time to earn their trust and get enough evidence to blow this thing out of the water. The second I have what I need, I'll get out of there, I swear._

 _I know this will be hard for you, and that you'll be scared for me. I wish I could have spared you that. But I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do this. For all the Averys and Bethanys and Taylor Shaws who are at risk, I have to try._

 _I love you so much, no matter what._

 _Jane_

Kurt switched to the second page, a lump growing in his throat as he looked down at her sketch. In it, he was lifting Bethany high in the air, grinning as she clutched at him with her mouth open in a silent squeal. Being hoisted up so high was one of his daughter's favourite things, though as she grew older it was becoming more difficult to lift her. Jane had captured Bethany's ecstatic expression perfectly, and his own sketched face was full of amusement and love.

Since Jane had begun this series of drawings of her memories, seeing their life together through her eyes had deepened his understanding of her feelings for him. He realised now that she kept a lot of her emotions below the surface, even when she was being openly affectionate. It probably had a lot to do with her upbringing at the orphanage. Hiding the things she loved was how she'd survived back then.

When he'd left Jane, he'd been unsure they'd ever get their relationship to a place where she loved him even half as much as he loved her. Now, the perceived depth of her love wasn't something he questioned. He just wanted her home with him, desperately wanted to try making love to her again. He needed her safely in his arms, in their apartment and in their bed.

He just hoped they had the chance to try again. _Please, Jane. Stay alive. Come home to me soon._


	12. Strength of Purpose

**Author's Note:** This chapter ends up in kind of a dark place, with Jane trying to take care of some captive children while not revealing to the criminals she's 'working for' that she's completely appalled and distressed by the situation. Content warning: neglected toddlers and child trafficking.

* * *

"What if this is all my fault?"

In retrospect, telling Avery that they'd lost contact with Jane wasn't the greatest idea Kurt had ever had. She'd asked if the undercover operation was going well, and he hadn't wanted to lie to her, but Avery hadn't taken it well.

"Avery, sometimes operations take unexpected turns. Why would it be your fault? Come on, sit down."

Avery reluctantly stopped pacing and sat back down, sighing. "I dunno, I just… First my mom died, then my dad. Now Jane is in danger. What if I just doom all of my parents to awful fates?"

Kurt shook his head. "You know that's not really true. Your parents' deaths weren't your fault."

Avery nodded, looking far from convinced. Kurt saw so much of Jane in her self-doubt and guilt, it made his heart ache. The apple really hadn't fallen far from the tree with Avery.

"My mother ran off when I was eleven. She could be dead. I have no idea." As Avery's gaze turned sympathetic, Kurt shrugged and continued, "My father died of cancer a few years ago. Was any of that my fault?"

"No, of course not! But…" Avery trailed off with a wry smile. "I'm being illogical. I get it."

"Jane is…really good at stepping into harm's way. She knows it's a risk, but she does it anyway, because she knows she can make a difference. Her skills and her training make her very good at her job. But she doesn't always think about how it'll affect the people around her, and she's not really used to having a daughter yet. I know she didn't mean to worry you, Avery."

"You're worried too. I can tell." Avery fidgeted. "I was asking her about taking down Crawford again the other night. What if I made her feel like she wasn't doing enough to get him, so she took a risky assignment to prove to me that she was trying?"

Leaning back in his seat, Kurt watched his stepdaughter. "If we're gonna play the 'what if' game, what if my being in Portland meant something got overlooked that I would have noticed before Jane went undercover?"

Part of him really did harbour that fear. He'd had to make a concerted effort to ignore it.

"You can't think like that," Avery said. "Jane had the rest of the team to help her out. One of them would have noticed."

"So I can't think like that, but you're allowed to?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Good point." Avery gave him a small, regretful smile. "I'm sorry. You're just as worried about Jane as I am. You shouldn't have to worry about me as well."

"You're allowed to be worried. She's your mom—your birth mom, I mean," he added, not wanting to sound as though he didn't consider Avery's adopted mother important to her. "We can all worry about each other. That's what families do."

"Yeah," Avery said softly. After a moment, she changed the subject. "I'm sorry about your parents. That sounds hard. Especially your dad's cancer…it's tough watching someone you love get worse, huh?"

 _Almost as tough as hearing your father confess to the murder you always knew he committed with his dying breath._ Kurt forced his mind away from that line of thought. "Yeah. We weren't close, not like you and your mom. But it was rough anyway."

"Did you ever…try to find your mom?" Avery asked hesitantly. "After you joined the FBI?"

Kurt shook his head, hoping he didn't look as bitter as he felt. "No. My sister asked me to once, but I wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be like you finding Jane. My mother left because she didn't want to be with us. She spent eleven years bringing us up, and when she left my father, she decided she didn't care enough to take us with her. I'm not interested in mending those bridges."

Avery winced. "I can understand that. Not everyone's cut out to be a parent, I guess."

"Speaking of which—how are you and Jane doing these days?" Kurt asked, changing the subject before he had to dwell on his own screwed-up past any more. It was his own fault for bringing up his parents with Avery, but he didn't want to leave the door open to any more conversation about them.

"We're doing better. I think sometimes I frustrate her, and sometimes she drives me nuts too, but that feels familiar. Why is it that parents always focus on what you're not allowed to do?" Avery sighed.

Hiding a smile, Kurt pointed out, "In your case, it's because you're in protective custody, not because we're worried about you getting pregnant or neglecting your studies or whatever other parents worry about."

"I know. And if it wasn't for Roman and the whole getting kidnapped thing, I'd tell you and Jane that I'm legally an adult and I can do what I want." She leaned forward and scratched at a stain on the safehouse's coffee table, to no avail. "I'm trying to be patient and not be a headache for you guys, but it feels like my whole life's on hold, here. College will start in September, and I don't even know if I can go yet."

"We're trying, Avery. As hard as we can. No one wants to take down Roman and Crawford as much as Jane."

Avery nodded, and went quiet for a long moment. "Do you think she's gonna be okay?" she asked, an almost pleading note to her tone.

Kurt took a second to consider his response. Outright lying would be dishonest, but a plain, realistic assessment of the situation would be cruel. _No. I'm scared she won't be okay. Most of the time, when we lose contact with an undercover operative in the field, it's because things have gone badly wrong. A couple of years ago, when Jane went dark during an operation, it was because she'd been made, and Shepherd killed twelve FBI agents in a bomb blast, then ordered Roman to kill his sister. It was only because they were family that Jane survived and got out. If these people have figured out she's not Penny Yates, they won't hesitate to put a bullet in her head._

"No one can look after herself in the field better than Jane. She's one of the best we have, and she asked us for time and space to work if she went dark. We're giving her that, and the second she needs us, we'll be ready to go in and help."

Recognising Avery's tension and restlessness, he added, "Just promise me you'll stick with your detail and not try to go off chasing leads on Crawford on your own. The last thing I need is for Jane to come back and find out you've been kidnapped or killed."

Avery scowled, "I wasn't going to—"

"Just promise me, Avery."

She gave a melodramatic teenage sigh. "Fine, I promise. It's not like I even know anything about this mission anyway."

 _Thank god for small mercies._

For good measure, he added a little guilt trip. He didn't feel fantastic about manipulating Avery, but Jane was sometimes so reckless that he didn't want to take any chances with her daughter, not while the situation was so precarious. "Okay, good. Because Jane asked me to make sure you were safe while she was undercover, and I'm not sure our relationship would survive it if you went missing again on my watch."

Her eyes widened, and some of the keyed-up atmosphere dissipated. Whatever she'd been planning, she'd just shelved it. "I'll stay safe, I swear. A-are you and Jane doing okay? She said things were better with you guys, but she kind of still looked sad."

The last thing Kurt wanted to do was discuss their intimacy issues with Jane's daughter. "We're getting there. I think once she gets back, everything's gonna be fine. I asked her if she wanted to move back home when she finishes this mission, and she said she wanted to, so…"

"That's great. She won't just give up and die undercover if she has that to look forward to, right?"

Kurt couldn't help but grin. "Avery, I've never met anyone less likely to give up and die than Jane. That's one thing you definitely don't need to worry about."

"Really?"

Avery put on a tough front sometimes, but she was still just a kid barely reaching adulthood. He saw that in her now—desperate for reassurance from a grown-up that everything would be okay.

"Yeah. Once she was held captive for three months by…people who wanted to know where the information in her tattoos came from. On her first day there, she discovered the cover over the floor drain in her cell was loose—and there was literally nothing in that cell apart from a bucket for her to use as a bathroom, not even a bed. She started pulling threads out of her clothes and weaving them into a rope, and she attached the end to the drain cover and hid it down the spout. After three months she had enough rope to use the drain cover like a mace. She took down five guys, stole their car keys and their shotgun, and got out of there."

Avery's eyes were huge. "Nobody told me about that. That's… that's just badass."

Kurt shrugged. "That's just your mom. She'd gotten some new information about Sandstorm before she was taken. The FBI thought she was a traitor at the time. I'd actually arrested her and she was taken from FBI custody. She was starting to suspect she'd been a terrorist, but she didn't know about Remi yet. She thought she had no one to fight for but herself, but instead of giving up, she decided she was gonna find Shepherd and take her down. She's strong in her body, but she's even stronger in her mind."

"And now she has us to fight for. Me and you and the team?"

"Exactly. And she's only been dark for a day. She's probably sneaking around and getting all the info we need, totally fine."

Avery looked reassured. Kurt wished he had the confidence in his own words as she seemed to have placed in them.

 _I need to find a way to get in there. Even if she is fine, backup never hurt anybody._

 _Think, Kurt. Find a way._

* * *

Jane took a deep breath and looked around the dingy underground room they'd given her to use as a bedroom. It had a cot in the corner and a filing cabinet she could use to store belongings, but sadly no records on the group's activities she could use to help convict them.

She'd turned to the guy in charge, Shapiro, and said, "What the hell is this? I thought you guys were rich? I'm doing this for the money, in case you'd forgotten."

"Relax, princess. This is temporary, while we're assessing your loyalties. Once you've delivered your first shipment of kids and you're as guilty as the rest of us, you can leave the facilities and spend the night at the Four Seasons if you want. You'll be rich enough, don't worry."

They'd locked her in overnight. _Cautious bastards._ But a few minutes ago the door had unlocked and someone had pounded on the door. "Rise and shine, Ms. Yates."

 _I can do this. It's not my first time undercover. Just because I don't have backup, that doesn't mean it's gonna go badly. These kids need me. Let's go, Doe._

Pep talk completed, she opened the door and headed out into the warehouse sub-basement. The bathroom wasn't far away, and she took care of her morning routine quickly, wanting to get to work. Since Yates had been told she'd be staying a couple of nights, Jane had packed a toothbrush and a few makeup essentials, plus enough of the makeup she was using to hide her tattoos for an emergency touch-up or three. The last thing she cared about right now was looking good, but the men would likely respect her more if she'd taken care of her appearance.

As she crossed the large space to Shapiro's office, the whimpering of small children—toddlers Bethany's age— tore at her heart. It was torture to hear them and not go to offer what comfort she could.

Shapiro was bent over some kind of log book, frowning, his glasses halfway down his nose. _I need to get a look at that book._

She tapped on the open door. "Morning, sir."

"Morning. Have a seat. Did you sleep okay?"

She'd had the worst night's sleep of her life, knowing there were children in distress just a hundred feet away, but too afraid the night shift was watching her to attempt to pick the lock. She'd have to gather as much information as possible during the day, while she was free to roam the warehouse.

"The cot wasn't the comfiest bed I've ever had, but hey." She shrugged and sat down. "Anything I can help with?"

He closed the log book. _Damn._

"Yeah. You're a nurse —can you take a look at one of the kids? Little asshole was stressing out all the others last night, trying to get out of the holding area. One of the night watch guys manhandled him a little, and I think he wrenched his arm." Shapiro said it with no more concern than he would have talked about a fence breaking.

 _Show. No. Disgust._

"I'm a midwife, not a pediatric nurse, but I'll do what I can. You got any candy I can use to bribe him with?"

Shapiro blinked up at her. "Huh? No."

"God, you should take care of that. Not much—you don't want a cage full of hyper kids—but it's so much easier to get 'em to do something when you have something they want. Maybe you won't end up injuring the merchandise that way."

"Hmm." Shapiro stood up and went to the door. "Anyone got any candy on 'em?"

A few of the toddlers glanced over, clearly recognising the word 'candy'. There were eight of them—she'd counted when she'd come in. Three were curled into balls, either napping or pretending to nap. The other five were clustered together, as though they thought there was safety in numbers. _Poor kids._

A guy leaned out from behind a stack of boxes and held out an open package of something. Niles, Jane thought his name was. "Got a few left."

"There you go. Get on it." Shapiro nodded and went back into his office.

After taking a bag of half-melted M&Ms from Niles, Jane headed over to the 'holding area' – basically a caged-off section of the warehouse big enough to hold about twenty adults at a push. The eight toddlers within looked pitifully small and sad within. It was difficult to keep her face impassive.

The smell of soiled diapers got stronger as she approached. At least the smell gave her an excuse to pull a distressed face. "God, whoever's on diaper duty needs to get here fast," she said to the guy standing guard at the cage door.

He gave her a blank look. "Diaper duty?"

Jane looked from him to the kids and back, trying not to look as though she cared one way or the other. "No one's gonna change these kids' diapers?"

He shrugged. "Nah. We got some somewhere, but they'll only be here till Friday. They'll change 'em at the other end of the journey. If we don't feed 'em much, they won't poop as much."

Jane sighed, as though the thought filled her with irritation rather than horror. "No wonder night watch can't control 'em. They've probably got diaper rash that hurts like hell. How long since they were changed last?"

Another blank look.

Jane stashed the bag of M&Ms in her filing cabinet and returned to Shapiro. Thirty minutes, a sarcastic conversation and the dispatch of a lackey to the drugstore later, she was letting herself into the holding area with a stack of diapers, ointment for diaper rash, and a ton of wet wipes. She didn't even begrudge having to do the literal shit work, though she made out that she did. _Anything to make these kids feel a little better._

"Who wants a clean diaper?" she called, trying to put enough softness in her tone that she wouldn't scare the kids, but not enough that the guards would question her stated aversion to them.

Most of the kids cringed away. Only one, a little girl with bright red hair, crawled forward.

"My name is…" _Don't say Penny—Penny wouldn't want the kids knowing her name. And don't say Jane._ "…Lauren. What's your name?"

The kid looked to be about three years old, old enough to be at least partly potty-trained, but Jane guessed she must have been taken at night, wearing a diaper to sleep in. "Mandy." She looked at the diapers, then down at her own waist, as though embarrassed. "I pooped lots."

"I know. You're stinky. Wanna come and get clean?"

Mandy nodded emphatically.

Jane made sure she set up her cleaning station facing away from the door guard, so that her facial expressions wouldn't give her away. She was shaking with rage and heartbreak as she cleaned up the poor child and applied ointment to her developing rash. Mandy watched Jane with a hope that brought tears to her eyes. She gave the little girl a smile as she fastened the clean diaper and helped her into her pyjama pants again.

"Where's Mommy?" Mandy asked.

Jane glanced around and caught the eye of the watching guard. _Damn it._ She rolled her eyes at him, trying to give the impression that she was over this whole experience, before turning back to Mandy. She couldn't even give her a little reassurance with the guy watching. "I don't know."

"I want Mommy. Want home."

 _I wanna go home too, kiddo._

"You think any of your friends want clean diapers too?"

During her time with Mandy, some of the other kids had decided she wasn't so scary. One by one, five more came to be cleaned up, but two resisted, both little boys.

Jane didn't have it in her to force them to do anything right now. They were already in an unfamiliar, hostile place and scared out of their minds. They might end up with UTIs and rashes, but those things were treatable once they got the kids to the hospital. She didn't want to add to their trauma by forcibly changing their diapers.

"Okay, guys. You play nice and while I go wash up, okay?" She got one step towards the door before Mandy threw herself forward and clung to her leg.

"Want home now." There were tears in the girl's eyes, and she couldn't bear to just shake her off.

"Soon, all right? But not now. You gotta stay here, Mandy. Be good for now, and the scary man will stay outside and not come in. Okay?"

Sniffling, the kid nodded and released her.

Jane let herself out of the cage, carrying her load of dirty diapers and wipes. The door guard stepped back so as not to brush against her, wrinkling his nose. "I thought you didn't like kids."

Jane snorted. "I don't," she said, keeping her voice quiet enough that Mandy couldn't hear. "But I like cash, and I like my eardrums intact. Kids that age are like dogs. You gotta bribe 'em with things they want. Trust me, your life'll be a lot easier. And quieter."

Before he could reply, she went to dispose of the trash, her teeth gritted the whole way. As she washed her hands and arms clean, touched up the makeup over her hand tattoos, then grabbed the M&Ms from the filing cabinet, she promised herself that she'd see each and every one of these scumbags locked away for good.

She returned to the cage with the M&Ms hidden in her skirt pocket—the FBI undercover costuming department had sewn deep pockets into the garment in case she needed to smuggle something out.

"Whose arm is ouchy?" she asked, her eyes on the two boys who refused to get up and have their diapers changed. "Can I make it better?"

None of the kids she'd examined so far had complained of an injury, so it had to be one of these two. It would be a struggle to get them to do anything without bait, however.

"I've got candy, but no one can have any until I've seen the arm that hurts."

As one, the kids turned to look at one of the boys. Even the other resisting kid took a peek at him.

Jane took the M&Ms out of her pocket. "Who likes M&Ms?"

One of the kids whispered to the boy with the hurt arm.

"No!" the boy snarled. "Don't wanna."

Jane went to sit next to him and lowered her voice to a murmur. "I know it's scary here, and the man was mean to you. But I'm not mean, I promise. I just want to help you all go home. But you gotta let me look at that arm, okay?"

She had no idea how well he could understand the situation, but Kurt had once told her that treating Bethany with respect often got him a lot further than enforcing his parental will on her. Of course, sometimes she just _had_ to have a tantrum, and that was when he had to pick her up and move her from place to place, but as a general rule, he'd told Jane to treat her like a mini person. It seemed to work. She stuck to that now, with this kid.

"You don't like M&Ms? They're chocolate, not peanut." She'd counted the remaining number of pieces in the bag, finding nine. One for each child, and one for her. She put hers in her mouth now, let it melt a little, then chewed with her mouth open so he'd smell the chocolate.

Someone's stomach rumbled. The kid uncurled a little, still holding his arm. "You'll hurt it."

"I just wanna take a little look so we can make sure it doesn't hurt any worse, okay? Can we take your shirt off, gently?"

With much negotiating and a few tears on the toddler's side, she managed to get the boy's shirt off. He wouldn't tell her his name, but she didn't push.

She was no doctor, nurse or paramedic, but she had enough first aid and field medicine training to recognise the injury as a sprain. Ice was probably out of the question—and it wouldn't be as effective now as it had been right after the injury—but she could at least bind it. Leaving the cage again, she scrounged for something to use as a makeshift sling, and after carefully helping him to put his shirt back on, she bound his arm close to his chest.

"You gotta rest that now, okay? It'll still hurt if you move it, but tomorrow it will feel better, and the day after it will feel even better."

The kid nodded, his big, brown eyes watering, then lighting up as she doled out a piece of candy to each captive child.

Leaving the cage again, Jane resisted the urge to go and hide in her allocated bedroom for a while, to regroup. _This is so much harder than I thought it was gonna be. I just want to get out of here and go hug Avery. Was she in a place like this, before she was given to the Drabkins? If she was, at least she was too young to remember it._

It wasn't quite as bad as the basement in the orphanage, where she and Roman had been held with about twenty other kids and too few mattresses. But it was close enough that it made her physically anxious.

 _Come on. The sooner you get what we need, the sooner you can get help for these kids. Put on your callous bitch face and get out there._

"All done?" Shapiro asked, as she went back into his office.

"Yeah," she said tersely. "Look, I get that no one else here knows shit about kids, but I didn't come here to play nursemaid. I thought you were bringing me in, showing me the ropes. So show me what I need to know."

 _And I will take you bastards down. Every last one of you._


	13. Risky Reunion

**Author's Note:** I really didn't mean to leave this fic without an update for so long! I just sort of got...distracted. Thank you to everyone who's nudged me for more in the meantime - I am now sort of focused on this fic again. As much as I focus on any fic, anyway! Hope the update is worth the wait, though it's shorter than I planned.

* * *

"Let's go eat."

Jane's head was spinning from all the information she'd been trying to cram into her mind. When she'd asked if she could write some of it down, Shapiro had agreed she could—at a later date, when they trusted her enough to make written notes. Until then, she had to rely on her memory only. _Cautious bastard._

He tossed his paperwork into the filing cabinet and locked it, and Jane suppressed a sigh. That paperwork included the log book she now knew contained the group's contacts on both ends of the chain, and the dates and records of 'transactions'. Suppliers, like Penny Yates, and buyers, like the illegal adoption agencies catering to people rich enough to buy their babies. She had to get her hands on that book. It would be vital to the prosecution's case against the organisation.

They headed towards the elevator—the warehouse's staff ate upstairs these days, having found out the hard way that if the kids smelled food that didn't make its way into their cage, they'd make more trouble than if they just took what they were given, with no hope of there being more.

 _I hate this mission. I hate it so much._

As they waited for the elevator, a high-pitched scream made Jane whip her head around. One of the kids was clearly in distress, though whether in pain, hungry or just afraid, she wasn't sure. When she looked back at Shapiro, he was rolling his eyes, no sympathy in his expression. She understood that not everyone liked kids, but to kidnap and sell them for profit was a completely different matter. It was like they weren't even human to him.

 _He's obviously guilty. Maybe I could just get him alone again, take him out quickly and quietly, then use the element of surprise to sneak around and disable the rest of them?_

Even as she thought it, Jane knew she was overestimating herself. Even if she was able to overpower everyone down here, she'd seen a CCTV screen upstairs that showed the kids' cage. Who knew how many other cameras were dotted around? It would only take one of the guys upstairs a moment to notice what she was doing and alert the others. She had no weapons on her, no backup. She had to be smart about this.

The elevator doors opened just as a voice screamed, "Want Lauren, want _Laurennnnn!_ "

The chorus was taken up by two or three other children's voices, and Shapiro hesitated as Jane, reminding herself that Penny Yates hated kids, cursed under her breath.

"Who the fuck is Lauren?" Shapiro asked, though Jane wasn't sure if he was asking her, or himself.

Either way, it was an opportunity for her to check on the kids without raising too many eyebrows. "I told 'em that was my name."

He gave her an indecipherable look. "Why?"

Jane snorted. "Do I look stupid? They're like living evidence. If we ever fall under suspicion, and even _one_ of those little ankle-biters says they had their diaper changed by Penny, all they gotta do is look down your personnel list and find me."

He nodded slowly. "That's smart."

Another howl from the cage had the guard outside it rattling the bars in frustration. "Shut the fuck up, you little runts!"

Jane turned back to the elevator and gestured. "We going, or…?"

They stepped into the elevator, and Jane hardened her heart. The kids wanted someone around who wouldn't treat them like livestock, and she wanted to go to them so badly. But she had no excuse to do so, not right now.

"How'd you get into this, anyway?" she asked, as they began to move upwards.

"Why are you asking?" he countered.

 _Careful._ "Well, I know how _I_ got into it. You guys approached me after I got disciplined for losing my shit and kicking an incubator. But I didn't even know this kind of thing existed, else I would have put the word out I was interested to try and find someone like you. How'd you come up with it?"

"Got snatched off the street when I was fifteen and homeless. They thought I was younger. By the time they realised their mistake, I'd already seen too much. They gave me a choice: learn the ropes and help 'em out, get three meals a day and cash in hand, or…die. Easy choice." He grinned. "I learned everything I could, got 'em to trust me, made a little cash, then shopped 'em to the cops the first chance I got some time on my own."

"Pretty smart," Jane said casually. "But didn't that wipe out a pretty lucrative source of income?"

"Eh, they were close to getting busted anyway. I saw the writing on the wall and decided to be the wrecking ball."

They headed for the stack of pizza boxes in the makeshift cafeteria area. Without their own cook or caterer, or even a real kitchen, these guys ordered in a lot, either from takeout places or bulk orders from local delis, posing as office workers. The food was never delivered to them—someone always went to pick it up. Whether that would lead to any useful CCTV footage for Patterson, Jane didn't know.

Shapiro grabbed a couple of pizza slices and sat down. Jane sighed and followed suit, hoping the dairy didn't make her sick after so many months of eating vegan. Somehow, she didn't think Shapiro would care about her dietary preferences, and she wasn't sure if he or his lackeys had ever observed the real Penny Yates eating, so protesting that she couldn't eat this would be a risk she couldn't take.

"Well," Shapiro continued, gesturing with his pizza, "a few years later I was hard up, and I figured 'why not?' I had contacts who could be turned to different means, I knew the way things worked, and how to prevent the same thing happening again…"

"How long you been in business now?" Jane enquired, then took a tentative bite of pizza.

"Twelve years."

Jane strove to keep her face coolly impressed. "You must be rolling in cash."

"We do pretty well. Speaking of cash…" Shapiro leaned forward. "I've got a proposition for you."

Knowing Penny Yates was obsessed with money, Jane made herself look intrigued. "I'm all ears."

"You've opened my eyes to a way we can improve our business model. Now, I know you don't like kids, but let's face it—you're good with 'em when it suits you, and you know what they need. Little bastards are screaming out for you after one meeting with you. And it occurs to me that we can charge more per head if they're docile, injury-free and well fed. With the older ones, we can just get 'em hooked on heroin to calm 'em down, but the younger ones go to be adopted. We can't give 'em addictions, or it raises flags with their paediatricians. The agencies buying the kids were taking care of the health issues on their end. Didn't seem worth our while to take _that_ much care of 'em, until I saw you today."

Jane dug the nails of one hand into her palm, using the pain to distance herself from her anger, and reminded herself that snapping the guy's neck would do nothing but get her killed. "Okay. What's your point?"

"I can tell you can already see where I'm going with this, but hear me out before you say no." Shapiro popped open a can of Coke. "Here's my offer. Once you've delivered your first shipment, you go on nanny duty. There's three shipments of toddlers in a row coming through next month, and we're short-staffed on guards. Having a nanny around for the little assholes would be real helpful."

"No way," Jane said immediately. "I wanted out of that hospital to have _less_ contact with kids, not more."

"We'll pay you double."

Jane hesitated, as though she were weighing up her hatred of kids against her love of money. "I dunno, boss. I've dealt with enough big brothers and sisters of newborns to know toddlers really piss me off. And what you're offering sounds a lot like a parenting gig. You want me to do this alone, for three shipments in a row?"

Shapiro sighed, but before he could offer a counter-argument, one of the guards appeared in the doorway. "Sorry to interrupt, boss, but we have a problem. Found a guy skulking around outside, trying to get in. He says he's one of the industrial park's security team, but…"

With a curse, Shapiro got to his feet. "Gonna have to restart this negotiation later, Ms. Yates."

Uneasily, Jane got to her feet, too. Was this someone from the FBI, here to give her some backup? Or was it an unrelated incident, someone accidentally blundering in while she happened to be here? Either way, someone could end up dead if Shapiro and his goons got too spooked.

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Go downstairs, get as many of our guys as we can spare to come up here," Shapiro directed distractedly. "I dunno who this guy is yet, but I want him to see he's vastly outnumbered and outgunned. Then keep the kids _quiet_. I don't care what you have to do."

 _Maybe this is my chance. But if this guy is one of my team, I can't just leave him to face the enemy alone while I sneak around._

"Got it." She looked towards the elevator, then back. "Where will you be?"

"Through there." Shapiro pointed towards an open door. "Just tell 'em it's damage control protocol. They'll know where to find me. Get going."

He was barely paying attention to her now, so Jane was able to linger for a second, craning her neck to try to get a glimpse of their hostage. For a couple of seconds, she couldn't see past the guards standing in the doorway, but they moved aside as Shapiro approached.

As she caught a glimpse of a stubbled cheek and the determined set of the man's jaw, Jane's heart wrenched. _No… Kurt, you stubborn idiot, why are you here alone? Does the team even know you're here?_

She needed to use this distraction to get hold of that log book, but if she did that, she might come back upstairs to find her husband dead.

There was only one thing she could think to do, and it was risky as hell. She just hoped she wouldn't be screwing up a plan the team had put together to get her and the kids out.

She barged into the room after Shapiro, marched straight up to the chair they'd tied Kurt to, and slapped him around the face, hard enough to whip his head to the side. _I'm so sorry, Kurt. I'll make it up to you later, I swear._

"What the hell are you doing here? Can't I go anywhere without your stalker ass following me?"

As Kurt recovered, blinking up at her with a stunned expression that was only a little exaggerated, Shapiro intervened, pushing her back from their hostage.

"Wait a minute—you know this guy?"

"Yeah. I'm so, so sorry, boss. He's my ex-husband. I guess a divorce and two restraining orders wasn't enough for him to get the message that it's _over_."


	14. An Unwelcome Test

**Author's Note:** I know it's been a while (again) since I updated this one, and I'm really sorry about that! I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get them out of this for a while, but eventually decided on this. Obviously, Jeller have a knack for running into villains that like to quiz their potential allies... First 2x19 (the polygraph/escape room episode) and now this... I'm hoping it doesn't come across as too easy a solution, but let me know what you think.

* * *

Kurt's cheek was stinging from the impact of Jane's palm against his cheek, but his relief at seeing her alive and well counterbalanced the pain. He wasn't too late to help her. _Thank god._

He'd wanted to give her a distraction, so that maybe she could get the evidence they needed and get out before the traffickers noticed what she was up to. Evidently, Jane had decided that saving his ass was more important, and he couldn't deny things had been looking dicey for him before she'd shown up.

Now he just had to go along with Jane's ruse—however painful it was to pretend to be divorced from her—and maybe they could get out of here alive, and with the kids.

"Penny—" he started, before the guy in charge—Shapiro, Kurt remembered from the files—cut in.

"Shut up and wait until I tell you to speak. You trespass on my operation, you do things my way."

Kurt shut up and waited, while Shapiro looked suspiciously between him and Jane.

"Having him here endangers my entire business, Ms. Yates. He can't leave here alive unless I know he's trustworthy, and I can't trust _you_ enough yet to just take you at your word. For all I know, the Feds have leaned on him to snoop around for evidence."

"Trust me, boss, he might be a grade-A asshole, but he'd never work for the Feds, and they wouldn't want him anyway. You want proof of that, just look at him. He got caught, didn't he?" Jane shrugged, shooting him a dismissive look. "Why would they send him to snoop around here, just to alert you that something was up and then get killed?"

Shapiro looked thoughtful, though his suspicious demeanour didn't lessen in intensity. "You raise a good point. So what _is_ he doing here?"

"I came to see what my wife is doing. If she's cheating on me, I have the right to know." It was a little too close to the bone, given everything their marriage had been through of late, but at least he could sell the 'pained and distrustful husband' routine.

Jane flinched at his words, and he silently promised her he'd make it up to her as soon as they got out of this mess.

"I'm not your wife. We've been divorced for two years, and I've already told you a million times to leave me the fuck alone." He knew the words were just Jane playing her role, but was the tremble in her voice real? God, he hoped not.

"Are you sleeping with this guy?" Kurt demanded, nodding towards the guy in charge. "What about the rest of 'em?"

"Yeah, I came here for an orgy." Jane shot back sarcastically, and a couple of the guards nearby snickered.

"Then what _are_ you doing here?" Kurt demanded.

"Uh, trying to make some money so I can get out of the debt _you_ landed me in?"

Again, Kurt internally cringed at the mention of something that had been a problem in their non-fictional marriage. He'd been in the red when Roman had finally deigned to give him Jane's location, after travelling the world to try to find her. If not for the cash Jane had been making as a mercenary, their financial situation would have been dire for the next couple of years.

"Hold up, lovebirds. Let's not get too far into an argument before I've decided if I should kill you both or not."

Jane gasped. "You're kidding, right? Boss, you know how valuable I could be to you. I admit, I don't wanna be a nanny to the little brats, but if it's a choice between dying or babysitting, I'll choose the option that means I get to enjoy the cash, y'know?"

"And your husband?" the boss asked.

" _Ex_ -husband," Jane said emphatically. "I, uh… Look, I don't love him anymore, and he's a royal pain in my ass, but I really don't want him dead. If he dies because of me, it'll be bad karma. What about…?" She hesitated, then snapped her fingers. "Delivery drivers! You must use specific drivers, right, who can keep their mouths shut? He can drive a truck. And if I know where he is, then I also know where he _isn't_ , which is stalking my ass. Give him work trucking the cargo down to Arizona or Florida or something; the long haul stuff that keeps him away from me."

"I could do that," Kurt agreed hastily, playing dumb. "I mean, I dunno what the hell you're talking about, but if it means not being dead, I'll do it."

"Is he likely to have ethical issues with the cargo, Ms. Yates?"

 _Damn right I do._ Kurt did his best to look clueless.

Jane snorted. "Nah. He'd sell his own grandmother so he could piss away the money down at the betting shop. Right, Mark?"

 _Ah, damn it._

"Mark?" The guard who'd grabbed him raised his weapon. "He said his name was Tom."

Jane tensed, almost imperceptibly. He doubted anyone else in the room was aware of the change in her.

"Yeah, like I was gonna give my real name to you guys, so you could go tell my wife I was here before I was ready for her to know it was me," he said, rolling his eyes at the guard.

" _Ex_ -wife," Jane snapped, holding up her makeup-covered hand. "You see a ring on this finger?"

It was strange to see her hand without both her wedding ring and her tattoos. Sometimes Kurt really hated undercover missions.

"You're gonna take me back one day, Penny," Kurt said, putting on the overconfident air of certain deluded men he'd seen come through the interrogation room. "You wait and see."

"Hell will freeze over, jerk." Jane turned back to the guy in charge. "Just let him drive a shipment south, get him away from me. Just by doing that, he incriminates himself and he's bound to you. Isn't that how these things work?"

"You have it all figured out, huh?" Shapiro glanced at one of the others, who shrugged. Shapiro sighed and turned back to Jane. "I'm still not a hundred percent convinced he's not a cop, or working for cops. And if he is, it's likely you are, too."

"So how do we prove we're not?" Jane said.

Shapiro looked from Jane to Kurt and back again. "You say you were married? I'm gonna make you prove it. Go on back into the cafeteria, and I'm gonna ask him some questions. Then I'm gonna come through and ask you what he said. Your answers don't match? You're both dead."

Jane turned to look at Kurt, who did his best to look intimidated by her. She took a step toward him and raised a fist in a threatening gesture. "This is the highest-paying job it's possible for me to get, and I want it. And I'm trying to save your stalker ass right now, not that you deserve it. You screw this up for me, and I'll mutilate you in the afterlife, got it? Tell the goddamn truth and we might actually live through this."

She turned and stalked away before Kurt could reply, but he got her message loud and clear: answer the questions as if he were being asked about their real marriage, not this fake one.

If the questions were straightforward—no tricks or multiple possible answers—they could breeze through this test and maybe even get out of this whole thing alive. Kurt had to admit this guy was clever, though. The likelihood of them being law enforcement and actually married to each other was extremely low. Any other combination of agents would be screwed right now.

"Love you too, baby," he called after Jane's retreating back, and hoped like hell he'd be alive to say it to her face later on.

* * *

Jane paced the cafeteria, occasionally glaring at the guards preventing her from leaving the room. The cheese on the mouthful of pizza she'd eaten before Kurt's arrival was already making her feel uncomfortably queasy—or maybe she was just sickened at some of the things she and Kurt had said to each other before. She'd been using actual details from the FBI casefile about Yates' ex-husband, but she wished she could take it all back. Their actual marriage was still fragile, and the last thing she'd wanted was to rub salt in either of their wounds.

Shapiro entered after about fifteen minutes, holding a piece of paper. While Jane wished for x-ray vision, Shapiro leaned against the wall by the door.

"I really hope you get these questions right, Ms. Yates. For your sake. Why'd you marry him?"

Jane's eyes widened—that was a question with so many possible answers that she'd have no idea what Kurt had chosen to go with. But then Shapiro laughed.

"Oh, sorry—that's not a question I asked him. I was just curious. He's obviously got it bad for you, but you…I think you could do better."

"That's why I divorced him," Jane said tersely. "And then took out the restraining orders when he didn't get the message." _You better not be working up to hitting on me, you creep._

"Okay, let's get this done. Maybe it'll all be over in a few minutes, and I'll have a new delivery driver to read in, and a nanny to send back on diaper duty." Shapiro glanced down at the paper he was holding. "Question one: when you were married, which side of the bed did Mark sleep on?"

"Standing at the bottom of the bed, looking at the headboard? The left." He always had, from the first night they'd spent together.

Shapiro nodded, but gave no sign that she'd answered correctly. "Question two: What was your first argument about?"

"After we first met, after we started dating, or after we got married?" Jane asked.

Shapiro raised an eyebrow. "He asked pretty much the same question. After you first met."

"Whether I should stay where I was, or whether I should leave with him." Jane suppressed a smile at the memory, feigning irritation instead.

He nodded again. "Question three: If he could only stop you from doing one thing, what would he choose?"

 _I hate this case so, so much._ "Running away." She didn't have to feign the anger on her face, though it was at being forced to answer, not at Kurt's justified wish that she stop taking off on him.

 _And I bet Penny Yates's ex-husband would give the same answer about her, though for entirely different reasons._

"Question four: to your knowledge, has he ever had erectile dysfunction?"

Jane stared at Shapiro, genuinely stunned. "That's a little personal, isn't it?"

Shapiro shrugged. "It's something a married couple would find it easy to agree on, if their lives were at stake. Mark answered. What did he say?" When Jane was silent a moment longer, he added, "Or you could refuse to answer, but it seems a little silly dying for second-hand embarrassment, don't you think?"

Jane gritted her teeth. _This guy deserves everything I'm gonna do to him._ "No. We had our problems in the bedroom, but he could always get it up."

"Question five: Has he ever, to your knowledge, visited a prostitute?"

If there was one thing Kurt had never had a problem with before they'd gotten together, it was encountering women more than happy to sleep with him. Jane fought the urge to laugh, reminding herself that Penny hated her ex. "Not to my knowledge, no. And I doubt he'd waste cash on hookers that he could use to gamble with instead."

Shapiro studied his piece of paper, but didn't react. "Question six: When is his birthday?"

"May eleventh." She barely even had to think.

"Question seven: When is your anniversary?"

Again, an easy answer. "September fourth."

"Question eight: to your ex-husband's knowledge, have you ever had an abortion?"

"No," Jane said, sighing. "How many questions are there?"

Shapiro smirked. "Just twelve more. We have to be thorough enough to make sure you don't answer the same through luck, and knowledge of each other as cops. I'm sure you understand."

Jane swallowed a groan. "Sure. Please continue."

"Question nine: to your ex-husband's knowledge, had you ever cheated on him while you were legally married?"

 _I'm so sorry, Kurt. Having to answer this must have hurt._ "Yes."

"Hmm. Question ten: to your knowledge, has your husband ever cheated on you?"

 _Rub it in, why don't you?_ "No," Jane said, and added for the benefit of their roles in this mission, "he's too obsessed."

"Question eleven…"

And so it went on, for ten more invasive questions. Luckily, none were designed to be ambiguous—Shapiro really was just checking they'd been married. If he'd just wanted an excuse to kill them, he'd have made it much more difficult.

After the twentieth question, her 'boss' smiled and approached her. "Congratulations, Ms. Yates. You and your husband passed."

"Ex-husband," Jane corrected, scowling. "Now please, tell me you can put him on a delivery schedule and give me a copy, so I know when he's not in town. It'll make it so much easier to arrange dates with guys on Tinder. Do you know how many times he's barged in when I've been trying to hook up with a guy?"

"I'll, uh, see what I can do."

"Have you told him yet?" Jane asked. "What his cargo will be?"

"I mentioned it, yes."

"How'd he take it?" She held her breath, hoping he'd managed to sell his reaction to Shapiro.

"Understandably surprised, at first, but then he asked how much he'd be paid, and we negotiated a little. I think the money will be enough to keep him quiet."

"He's not getting paid more than me, right?" Jane forced herself to keep in character as Penny Yates, though she wanted to melt with relief. "Because I'm gonna literally be cleaning up these kids' shit, and you're gonna get more for each kid because I'm taking care of 'em. He's just driving a truck."

Shapiro snorted. "Don't worry, Ms. Yates. Our agreement stands, though because of the inconvenience tonight, I think you can do the first couple of months at the rate we initially agreed on."

"But you said you'd pay double—" Jane protested.

"That was before your husband decided to make a nuisance of himself. Yes, yes, I know—ex-husband."

Jane muttered obscenities under her breath, but forced a smile. "Given that the alternative is probably that you'll just kill me, I guess that's fair."

"I believe in rewarding my loyal employees. Do your job well, and you'll get a pay rise in due course."

Jane nodded. "Good to hear. So now what?"

"Mark is waiting to hear if you passed the test. After that, we'll be introducing him to our processes, and keeping him here at least one more night, the same as you. I'm afraid you'll be sleeping in the same room. We don't have any more spare rooms with doors that lock." Shapiro reached for the cafeteria door handle.

"Oh, come on, boss," Jane complained, masking the relief she felt that she and Kurt would be able to get some time alone, to strategise a way out of this mess.

"Just think of the money, Ms. Yates. I'm sure you can suffer one night in the same room. You used to share a bed, after all." Shapiro pulled open the door. "Now, I assume the merchandise needs diaper changes. Let whoever's closest to the cage know if you require anything else. Within reason, of course."

"Understood, boss," Jane said quietly. There was no sense in fighting too hard to be separated from Kurt—if she got what she wanted, she'd be shooting herself in the foot.

With no excuse to linger, she headed back towards the elevator. It might be a few hours until she saw Kurt again, depending on what Shapiro had him doing, but at least they would both be safe—for now.


	15. Roommates

**Author's Note:** In which Jeller cuddle and plan things. I totally just want to wave a magic wand and get this case over and done with, but since I was the one who turned this into a case-fic, I'm the one who has to see it through to its potentially disastrous conclusion before I can get Jeller home. Here's hoping I don't stall again before I get that far! Thank you for reading along, as always.

* * *

By the time Shapiro declared it was 'time for bed', Kurt was thinking longingly about grabbing him and beating his head against the table until it broke—either the table, or the guy's head; it made no difference to Kurt.

He was ushered back to the floor of the warehouse that contained the kids' cage—how the hell did these people sleep at night?—and tried not to look in their direction. At least, not until he heard Jane's voice, softly addressing the children.

As they got closer, he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his wife, rationalising that it was what the stalker ex-husband he was pretending to be would do in the same situation. Truthfully, he just needed to check Jane was okay.

She left the cage a moment later, shooting a long-suffering look at the guard at the door. "They should behave tonight, but if they don't, come and get me, okay? No point terrorising 'em—it just means more noise and maybe more injuries."

"You got it," the guy said, looking as bored as if he were guarding eight sacks of potatoes, instead of eight scared, sad children.

Jane looked up and saw him approaching. Her eyes lit up, but she quickly put on a scowl and sighed. "Oh, great. Did they tell you about our sleeping arrangement?"

It was the only thing that had stopped Kurt from going crazy and trying to take out the entire crew of traffickers on his own. Knowing he was guaranteed a long period of time to brief Jane on the plan—at least, as much of a plan as the team had come up with before he'd told them he wasn't waiting any longer to go in and help his wife—had given him reserves of patience he'd otherwise struggle to find.

He grinned at Jane. "Don't worry, honey. Maybe we can use the time to reconcile. Don't you think you've been apart from me long enough?"

Jane cursed under her breath and beckoned for him to follow, then stalked towards a passageway on the opposite side of the warehouse floor. Kurt noted the camera that slowly swivelled from one side of the hall to the other, centring on the door Jane shoved open.

"This is where we're sleeping. Your cot stays on that side. My cot is on this side. You don't approach my cot while I'm sleeping for any goddamn reason, you got it?"

"But what if I need to cuddle for warmth?" Kurt asked sarcastically, following her inside.

Jane made an infuriated noise and crossed to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Using a key, she unlocked it and pulled a toiletry bag and pyjamas from the top drawer. "I'm gonna go brush my teeth and get ready for sleep. When I come back, you can go in. Then the guards are gonna lock us in all night, so if you need to pee, you're just gonna have to hold it."

Kurt glanced towards the door. Finding no guard watching them, he turned back and winked at Jane as he said, "I'll just go in the corner."

Jane let herself laugh silently, her eyes shining with amusement. Then she pulled her pissed-off expression back into place. "The hell you will! Try it, and I'll cut off your balls with my nail clippers, I swear to God!"

She stormed back out into the hall, while Kurt didn't have to feign his wince.

Jane seemed to take forever to get ready for bed, though he was pretty sure it was part of her feigning reluctance to spend the night locked in with him. When she came back out, Kurt made sure to complain about women and the time they took in the bathroom before he went to prepare for bed himself.

Someone had even managed to find a spare toothbrush for the unexpected new recruit. _Might still die before this mission's over, but at least I'll do it with good dental hygiene,_ he thought, wishing he could find the gallows humour more amusing.

Once he was done in the bathroom, he returned to their designated room, where a guard now stood in the doorway. Jane was curled up under a blanket on her cot, facing the wall.

"I'm back, baby. It's just you and me, all night long."

"Are you talking to the guard, or your hand?" Jane sniped, not turning over.

Kurt couldn't help but grin, and covered for himself by saying to the guard, "She still loves me. This is how she shows she cares."

"Listen, I'm the one who has to sit in the next room all night, so how about you two keep it quiet tonight, okay? I don't wanna hear arguing, I don't wanna hear fucking—"

Jane gave a loud, derisive snort.

Kurt clapped the guard on the shoulder. "Thanks for believing in me, man."

"Whatever." The guy sighed and stepped back from the door. "I don't care if you sleep, argue, fuck…hell, you can kill each other for all I care. Just do it _quietly_."

He shut the door before Kurt could say anything else. The lock clicked into place, and footsteps retreated, though not far.

Jane rolled over on her cot, while Kurt gestured to her that they should keep the charade going for a few more exchanges.

"Come on, Penny, you're really gonna make me sleep all the way over here?" Kurt sat down on his cot, wishing he could just shake off the deadbeat ex act and pull Jane into his arms.

"Damn right, I am. I almost died today because of you. Least you can do is let me get a good night's sleep."

Kurt gave an exaggerated sigh. "If I let you sleep all night, can I take you out on a date?"

Jane paused, then said, "How about you let me sleep all night, and tomorrow I'll decide?"

"You're just gonna say no," Kurt complained, gesturing to his wife that they should bring the conversation to an end.

"It's either a solid no tonight, or a 'let me think about it' until the morning," Jane snarled back. "Go to sleep, Mark."

Kurt groaned. "Fine. Sleep well, baby."

They sat for a couple of moments, their attention split between the locked door and each other, listening for any signs of movement from outside. Then Jane slid off her cot, crossed the room and sat beside him on his, whispering, "I wish you hadn't come, but I'm so glad you're here."

Kurt wrapped his arms around his wife, burying his face against her neck for a moment, then positioning his mouth close to her ear. "Hey, I waited a whole twenty-four hours before I came rushing in to rescue you. How're you holding up?"

Jane held him tightly, taking a deep breath, then letting it go in a shuddering sigh. "Not great. God, Kurt, those little kids… They're so scared. They miss their moms and their dads. They just want to go home."

"We're gonna get them home. Every single one of them," Kurt vowed, hoping he wasn't being overconfident. "And if any of these bastards survive the takedown, we're gonna make sure they're locked up for the rest of their lives."

Jane kissed his shoulder. "You always know what to say. Thank you."

 _Wish I didn't need to._

"I'm so sorry about all the things I had to say earlier," she whispered. "And the questions they asked us… I know this can't be easy for you."

"It's okay. I'm sorry, too." He drew back to look at her, cupping her face in both hands. "Anything to get us home safe, right?"

"Right," Jane agreed sadly, touching her forehead to his. "Us and the kids. Ugh, I wish I could have spared you this case. They're Bethany's age. You shouldn't have to see this."

"Neither of us should." He knew Jane loved Bethany as fiercely as if she were her own daughter. Not to mention, a case with captive children must be bringing back memories of the orphanage for her, even though she and Roman had been older than the kids here right now.

Jane sighed. "Yeah, I know. But still…I hoped I could get in, take advantage of a hole in their defences, and be out again before you got back from Portland. I know you've always hated cases with kids."

His thoughts had been swinging back and forth between Taylor, Bethany, Jane and baby Avery all day—his mind was exhausted from keeping up the charade of being Mark Mason, and from keeping the horror of what was going on in this facility from the forefront of his brain. Knowing that his wife had tried to spare him this case gave him new strength, and further renewed his belief in their relationship.

It meant the world to him that she'd wanted to protect him from this, though she had her own child-related trauma to battle through. And if he could have done the same for her, he would, without hesitation. Even if it meant he had to suffer in her place.

"I love you so much," he murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

Jane closed her eyes and leant into his touch, a smile touching her lips, though she looked on the verge of tears. "I love you, too."

Kurt gave her a lingering, tender kiss, then held her close, stroking her hair. For a few minutes, they remained that way, drawing strength from each other, but as the faint sound of a child crying came to them through the closed door, they straightened. Kurt saw the same determined anger in Jane's eyes as he felt in his own chest.

"We might not have much planning time tomorrow. I'm not supposed to want to be around you, and you don't want to push Shapiro too far by looking like you want to slack off to come and bug me." She shot him a pleading look. "Please tell me the team are standing by, and there's a plan."

 _Half of one, at least._

"We're gonna have to improvise a little, but only until your original deadline of noon tomorrow. That's when the strike teams are hitting this place, and they're trusting us to get the kids out of the line of fire by then, and as much incriminating evidence as we can secured."

Jane considered, looking worried. "I know where Shapiro keeps his log book—it's got everything we'll need for a prosecution _and_ to take down the guys at either end of the chain. It's locked in a filing cabinet in his office; should be pickable, but the cameras have prevented me from getting time alone in there. With the kids so vulnerable and me being new, even taking one camera out was too risky."

Kurt nodded, storing the new information with what he'd learned of the operation and premises that day. "As soon as Shapiro learns there's a raid, he'll go straight for the log book and try to burn it. We'll have to come up with some reason for him to be away from his office, and for you to be near it, as our backup arrives. You pick locks faster than me, and you know where to look, so I'll be the distraction."

"I don't like this," Jane said. "There's too much we don't know. We'll somehow distract everyone, _and_ grab the logbook, _and_ shield eight terrified toddlers at the time of the raid? Just the two of us, defending ourselves with whatever we manage to scrounge up?"

Kurt relaxed slightly, glad to be able to deliver a little good news.

"There's been a development since you went in. Patterson's been chatting with one of the drone pilots who works on the top floor of the NYO, and long story short, they flew a drone carrying a remote-controlled car onto the roof of the warehouse."

Jane blinked. "Uh…okay."

"The car's got a video camera embedded in it. They remotely removed a vent cover from somewhere up there, and long story short, we have eyes in here—and a way to get the kids out before the raid, if we can manage it."

She heaved a relieved sigh. "Thank god for Patterson."

Kurt knew exactly what she meant, but couldn't help himself. "So I come in here risking my life to help you, but it's thank god for _Patterson_?" he murmured, not bothering to conceal his amusement.

She nudged him affectionately. "Come up with a way we can get all eyes away from the kids for long enough to get them out, and I'll revise my statement."

"That's still up in the air, but Patterson's shorting the video cameras out just after one in the morning. They might not let us out to help search the warehouse, but on the other hand, they might. And if they do, we can try to come up with something we can use tomorrow."

Jane frowned down at their joined hands, deep in thought. "But if they don't?"

"Patterson will hopefully find a way to cause a distraction tomorrow, an hour before the raid. And I'll try to come up with something to get you to that log book unseen." Jane still looked doubtful, so he delivered the really good news. "There are weapons waiting for us at the escape route for the kids. We won't be able to get out through there, but the kids will, and Patterson had the radio-controlled car drag a bag of weapons up the tunnel to the hatch."

Jane sagged with relief. "That makes me feel a lot better. Assault weapons?"

"And handguns, and a couple of smoke grenades each. I know—thank god for Patterson."

"Have you found the tunnel entrance from the inside? How far from the kids' cage is it?" Jane asked.

That was the not-so-great news. "Same floor, but the other side of the warehouse. There's a hatch in the floor. It was partially covered by crates, but I moved them back. The weapons are there, easily reachable, but I didn't have time to grab anything before the guy with me came back."

"And they just left a child-sized exit unsealed? That doesn't seem like this group. They're cautious to the extreme," Jane said.

Kurt grinned. "They didn't. It was welded shut until Patterson had one of her gadgets apply a plasma torch to it. Only had to give it a couple of hard tugs, and it opened."

At last, Jane managed a smile. "Okay, so we have weapons and a way out for the kids. We can't get them out until just before the raid, or the guards will notice. Maybe we can get one or two out without them noticing – have the rest of the kids bunch up together so it looks like there might be a couple more sleeping in the middle."

Kurt nodded. "We need some way to get the kids to trust me before the raid. I could try to hang around outside the cage in the morning."

"There's always a guard outside the cage, day or night. No one wants the job because the kids' diapers smell, plus they're noisy when they get upset. You could volunteer to be the cage guard, make it seem like you want to sleaze on me some more. Then I can point you out to the kids."

Kurt kissed her temple, unable to help himself. "What if I _do_ wanna sleaze on you some more?"

She laughed under her breath. "I think you've been playing this role a little too long already. But you can sleaze on me all you want when we get out of here."

"Good. 'Cause ever since I heard you went dark yesterday, I've been trying not to think about you dying before we get to share a bed again." The words came out more seriously than he'd meant to say them.

Jane's expression softened in response. "We're gonna get past this. This mission, and this thing with us."

"I know." Maybe they were fooling themselves, and tomorrow would see them both dead, along with the kids they were supposed to be protecting. But they had to have hope. Hope would keep them fighting.


	16. Guns, Hugs and Squirrels

**Author's Note:** Thank you to everyone who's still with me! I'm not sure how much longer the case will take. I want to say three chapters, which probably will make it four or five. *eyerolls at self* Anyway, Jane gets to be sneaky in this chapter.

* * *

Having Kurt with her in this hellhole calmed some of Jane's anxiety. It was impossible to get too overwrought when she was spooned with him on his narrow cot, feeling his chest rise and fall with every breath. His arms around her, and his familiar scent, reassured her like nothing else could.

They dozed together for a while, then—as Kurt's watch showed the time was edging past midnight—reluctantly separated. Jane returned to her own cot to await their potential summoning when the cameras went out within the next hour. She would have liked to spend the time in Kurt's arms, but if they both fell asleep, and somehow slept through the guard approaching and unlocking the door, it would look suspicious if they were sharing a cot. Penny Yates, as Jane had been playing her, would never deign to fall asleep in her 'ex'-husband's arms, even if she did give in to his advances and sleep with him.

From the other side of the room, she couldn't quite tell if Kurt had managed to find sleep again, but she hoped he had. He probably hadn't gotten more than two hours' rest last night, while he worried about her and tried to come up with ways to save her life. Not that her night had been particularly comfortable either, but she'd gotten about five hours, aided by the knowledge that the door was locked, with a camera tracking past outside. There had been nothing she could do but sleep, except worry about the kids.

Jane was wondering if Avery was okay, wishing she could hug her daughter, when rapid footsteps approached the door. The lock clacked open with a suddenness that jolted Kurt awake on the other cot. Jane didn't have to feign dazzled weariness when the overhead light blinked on without warning, and the guard who'd locked them in earlier levelled a gun at first Kurt, then Jane.

"What the hell, man?" Kurt mumbled, shielding his eyes from the brightness.

Jane groaned and struggled into a sitting position. "What's going on? Did you mishandle another one of the brats?"

"They're both here," the guard said into his radio, presumably communicating with whoever had noticed the cameras were off.

"Yeah, where else could we be? You locked us in, remember?" Kurt said, shaking his head.

The guard examined them both suspiciously for a moment, then sighed. "Might as well get up and help us. The camera system just went out."

Jane immediately lurched to her feet, alarm on her face. "And you think someone's planning to get in? Are we in danger of being compromised? Damn, this can't be happening, not before my first payday."

Kurt rubbed his face, looking stressed. "Is it sabotage, or could it be an electrical fault?"

"We're still looking. You know anything about electronics, either of you?"

"No," Jane said.

"Little bit. You must have someone who knows that stuff better than me, though?" Kurt stood up, giving an exaggerated stretch once he was on his feet.

"We do, but he's on the day shift. You come with me, see if you can figure it out."

Kurt nodded and grabbed his shoes. He'd had to sleep in his clothes, since he hadn't planned to be caught and to stay overnight in a locked room. In fewer than ten seconds, he'd be ready to go.

"What about me? Yesterday, when this loser tried to sneak in,"—Jane indicated Kurt—"Shapiro told me to go make sure the kids kept quiet. You want the same now?"

The guard scratched his cheek, uncertain. "I still don't like the coincidence that he comes in here after you, and then the cameras go out."

Jane shrugged. "Yeah, well, Shapiro seemed satisfied after he tested us. Said we were definitely married once. What, you think they let married cops work cases together? That would be a total disaster. They'd put each other's safety before the cases." When the guard still looked hesitant, Jane gave up on the idea of being allowed to roam through the warehouse. "Fine, you don't trust us? Lock me in with the kids or something. I'll keep 'em quiet, and you don't have to worry about what I'm doing. And if you have me locked up, Mark will want to make sure you let me out again, so he'll be on his best behaviour. Deal?"

This obviously appealed to the guard. "Yeah, that sounds like a plan."

Jane scowled at Kurt. "Best behaviour, you got it?"

"Yes, ma'am." Kurt gave a terrible approximation of a salute. Knowing he'd been to military school, it was difficult for Jane not to smile.

Jane turned back to the guard. "Can I get dressed first?"

"No."

Rolling her eyes and muttering about dying of hypothermia, Jane toed on her shoes, then followed Kurt and the guard over to the cage on the darker side of the warehouse. The smell of a soiled diaper or two reached her nose as they approached.

Their guard wrinkled his nose at the man guarding the cage—his name was Niles, Jane remembered. "Don't these little noise-blasters ever stop shitting?"

Jane sighed and reached for the diaper-changing supplies near the cage door. "Thank your stars that's my problem, not yours."

"They got you changing diapers?" Kurt said, sounding as disgusted as if he'd never changed one in his life. "Gross."

"For the money they're paying me, I'll put up with it," Jane said, and looked at Niles. "Can I go in?"

Wordlessly, Niles took the keys from his belt and unlocked the door. The kids, huddled as far from the cage entrance as they could get, whimpered sleepily.

"Lock her in, then go help Jim and Pedro with the perimeter sweep," their guard said.

"Are you nuts? I'm not leaving my post without relief!" It seemed Shapiro had harsh penalties for whichever guard left the kids alone.

"I am the relief," Jane said, stepping past Niles. "Leave me a gun if you really don't think I can stop a few ankle-biters from getting out of a locked cage."

After a moment's hesitation, Niles locked the door behind her. No gun was forthcoming, but Jane hadn't expected miracles.

She turned to glance at the kids, wishing she could smile and reassure them, before looking back at the adults outside the cage. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get going and figure out why the cameras are down! This whole thing is making me jumpy."

"You and me both," Niles grumbled, and wandered off after Kurt and the other guard.

Jane watched Kurt go with a sinking heart. With a double escort, he'd be hard-pressed to get away for long enough to find something capable of causing distraction tomorrow, and she didn't dare pick her way out of the cage when she didn't know how many other traffickers were roaming this floor.

There was a lamp on a table just outside the cage door, which acted as a night-light for the kids. Jane guessed the crew had learned the hard way that toddlers were often scared of the dark. She crouched near the light, setting out her diaper-changing supplies. "Hey, you guys—it's Lauren. Anyone need a hug?"

There was a scuffle, then red-haired Mandy tottered over, not stopping until she could throw her arms around Jane's neck. "I'm scared."

Jane hugged her tightly, glad to be able to show her some comfort now that there was no one nearby. "It's okay, Mandy. We're gonna get you home soon, I promise. You just have to wait one more day, okay?"

"Home?" Dark-haired Leo approached tentatively.

Jane nodded, gently easing Mandy back from their embrace. "Hey, Mandy, can I give Leo a hug now? I want to give all of you who want them hugs before the bad men get back, okay?"

Mandy whimpered, but after a few moments of gentle coaxing, she let go of Jane, sitting down next to her instead. Leo flung himself at Jane, sniffling, and as Jane tried to comfort him as best she could, the rest of the kids began to gather around.

"Quick hugs, okay?" she told them all, checking to make sure the coast was still clear. "And when everyone has had a hug, I'll do diaper changes."

There were more than a few tears shed, Jane's among them. The feel of each small child in her arms reminded her of comforting Bethany after she'd skinned her knees at the park, the last time she'd seen her stepdaughter. She strove to keep it together for the sake of the kids whose lives now depended on her.

"I'm sorry, kiddo," she murmured, encouraging Rebecca—who was sobbing as though her heart was breaking—to unwrap her arms from Jane's neck. "If you need more hugs, you can hug each other, okay? But if they see me hugging you, they'll be mad."

Rebecca clung to Mandy, sniffling. Seeing the other girl patting Rebecca's blonde curls in an imitated gesture of comfort made Jane want to laugh and cry at the same time.

As she changed Leo's wet diaper, she told the kids, "You can't tell anyone you're going home, okay? It's our secret for now. Don't talk about it at all, not even to each other. If you want to talk about going home, just say 'chocolate', okay? It's a secret code."

She had no idea if kids of this age even had a good enough understanding of secrets and code words, but she had to try. Hopefully, they'd be too intimidated to talk much while the guards were near.

"But tomorrow, if I come get you and say you have to come quick, you have to be really quiet. Quiet as a mouse. There's a magic tunnel that will take you back to your moms and dads, and my friends are on the other side to help you get home. But we have to be really quiet and really quick, okay? No crying or shouting, or the bad men will make you stay."

The looks on the faces around her ranged from determined to frightened, but everyone nodded.

"But you can't talk about the magic tunnel until we get there, so if you want to talk about it, you could call it..." She stalled, thinking.

"Squirrel!" Kayden half-shouted. He was a little older than the rest, she'd learned through talking to them all earlier, though he was small for his age.

Jane grinned at his enthusiasm, though how he'd gotten to squirrels from tunnels, she had no idea. "Right! You can say you're gonna get the squirrel to take you to get chocolate, because 'chocolate' means home, right?"

Someone giggled. It was a little forlorn, but at least it was something. Anything she could do to keep the kids from losing hope was worth it.

"Anyone else's diaper need changing?" From the smell, she suspected so.

Rebecca reluctantly stepped forward, her expression glum, and Jane got to work. Making sure they were still alone, and the kids were all listening, she said, "I've got a friend in here, too. He was just outside there when I came in, but you might not have seen him. He had a blue shirt on, and really short, brown hair, and a kinda short beard. Did anyone see?"

A couple of the kids nodded.

"If you didn't see him, that's okay. If I can show you in the morning, I'll do that. But if he comes in and there are no bad men, and he says it's time to go, you go with him, okay? He's a kind man, and he wants to help you. He knows where the magic tunnel is, too. I mean, the squirrel."

She finished up Rebecca's diaper just as the freight elevator whirred to life. Kurt and the guards coming back, or other new arrivals?

"Remember, like we talked about before we went to bed," she murmured to the kids. "Don't all come and see me at once, okay? Can everyone except for Tommy go back to bed now, before the bad men come back?"

The other kids scampered back to their sleeping corner, while Tommy lingered, looking nervous.

"It's okay," Jane reassured him. "I just want to check how your arm is doing."

"Hurts," Tommy said, looking down at the sling Jane had managed to make out of a torn, discarded T-shirt.

"I know, Tommy. But just let me have a little feel. I won't make you take your shirt off this time, I just want to see if it's any better." Carefully, she felt around the sprained shoulder joint, trying not to let her worry show.

There was no way Tommy was going to be able to crawl very far on his hands and knees. Maybe if she'd had time to help him practice crawling, while using only one arm, it might have helped. As it was, though, he was too young to manage a sustained crawl with a sprain. She and Kurt would have to protect him—much easier to do with one child than eight, though even one was more than Jane liked to have near a gunfight.

Niles approached as she told Tommy to go and get some sleep with the others. Jane picked up the plastic sack full of diaper refuse and shook it in the guard's direction. "How long until I can get rid of all this?"

Niles unlocked the cage. "You're a free woman, until Boyd locks you back in your room for the rest of the night. Your husband found the source of the camera malfunction. Said the cable looked like it had been chewed through by a rat."

Jane hushed him. "Ex-husband. And do you _wanna_ scare the kids?"

"Okay, mice," Niles amended, rolling his eyes. "Fluffy, friendly mice, like Mickey Mouse."

 _More like Patterson Mouse,_ Jane thought. _Or maybe Kurt Mouse made it look less like sabotage somehow. Either way, that takes the pressure off us when Shapiro gets here and demands to know why the cameras don't work._

"Can they fix it tonight?" she asked, feigning nervousness. "I know I'm still new, but I don't like us not having eyes where you guys usually have 'em."

"You and me both. Your guy said something about the system having old connectors, might be needing a whole new cable we don't have now. If Mike doesn't have a spare one to bring in tomorrow, we're gonna have to go out and buy one."

If they could get through the next twelve hours without cameras, that would make things _so_ much easier.

"I'm gonna go wash the crap off my hands," Jane said. "I can go alone, right? Now we know it was a rat that did it?"

Niles waved her off, sitting back down next to the lamp and picking up the worn paperback he'd been reading.

 _Maybe I can actually do some recon, after all._

After disposing of the trash, quickly washing her hands and reapplying the tattoo-concealing makeup to them, Jane shot a longing look down the hall towards Shapiro's office. If she hid his log book now, he'd notice it gone first thing in the morning, and the kids wouldn't have a chance. Instead, she went the other way, checking behind a closed door she'd been unable to get to while the cameras were active.

It was a cleaning closet. Jane scanned the chemicals, noting what could be mixed together to form dangerous gases, or sprayed in vulnerable faces to blind or stun.

She closed the door quickly as footsteps approached, and ducked back into the room she and Kurt had been sleeping in. Then she stuck her head out.

"Boyd? That's your name, right?"

The guy looked up on the way into the room he'd been semi-guarding their 'bedroom' from. "Yeah. What's up?"

"Uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but…oh, what the hell. I just started my period."

Predictably, the guy froze. _Works every time._

Jane doubled down. "I wasn't expecting to start until a couple of days from now, but you can't predict these things a hundred percent, I guess. And my flow is really heavy at the start. I've got maybe ten minutes before I bleed through all the toilet paper I just put in my underwear. Do you know where I can find some sanitary products?"

"I, uh…no."

"Damn it!" Jane covered her face with her hands, then let them drop, putting on a slightly frantic air. "Do you ever have any other women come through here? Can I check the bathrooms, see if anyone might have left something I can use?"

"Go right ahead. I'm not getting involved with this." Boyd backed away, holding up his hands as though to ward her off.

 _It would be so easy to take him out. But with the kids still here, it's way too risky to start picking off guards. Kurt might have been stalling and trying to fool them into thinking they can't repair the surveillance system until tomorrow, but it only takes one of them to find the right way to connect things up, and I could be caught on camera any second now._

She relaxed her hands from the fists they'd been making, and gave a false smile. "Thanks, Boyd. Just…get on your radio and make sure no one shoots me, okay? I'm already bleeding enough."

She had to turn away before he saw her snickering at the horrified look on his face. As she hurried out of the room, she heard him announce to the rest of the guards, "Don't shoot the nanny. She's on the rag and looking for tampons or whatever. No, I'm not gonna go with her. She keeps talking about blood."

 _So predictable,_ Jane thought. _Thank god stereotypes sometimes_ are _based on truth._

She made her way towards the part of the warehouse Kurt had described, rummaging in containers and looking through doors as she went—partly pretending to search for sanitary products, but mostly trying to find the hatch that led to the 'magic tunnel'.

Mercifully, the hatch was in a corner of the warehouse that someone had tried to turn into a makeshift office, using packing crates and tall sections of chipboard. As a result, there was no direct line of sight to the tunnel from the rest of the warehouse. At least one thing was in their favour on this mission.

There were maps spread over the three desks in here—Jane guessed they must use old-school paper maps, in order to avoid leaving a digital trail of their routes. _Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best—unfortunately for law enforcement._

She switched on the lamp on one of the desks, opened the top drawer—so it'd look as though she were searching it if she had to quickly come up with an excuse for being in here—then turned to the hatch.

It wasn't too difficult to pull open, now Kurt had jerked it loose. There was something slick and gel-like on the hinges—had Kurt found liquid soap or hand sanitiser to lubricate them, so the hatch would open noiselessly?

The tunnel was a tetanus infection waiting to happen, but it was the only option they had to get the kids out. It was deep enough that a toddler could crawl on hands and knees, but Jane could tell it would be impossible for her shoulders and hips to squeeze through the same area.

The bag of weapons was within arm's reach, and she gave it a longing look.

 _Maybe I could just take the handguns now, so we can tuck them in the back of our pants and have them ready if we need them?_ She wanted to be armed so badly that her fingers twitched. She could improvise a melee weapon if threatened, but a firearm would be a much quicker, easier method when it came to taking these guys down.

She backed towards the rest of the warehouse, craning her neck to see if she could see anyone approaching. Everything was still and quiet in this part of the warehouse, so she returned to the hatch and pulled out the long canvas bag.

It was grimy, and she had to shake a roach off it, but when she unzipped it and pulled out her trusty FBI sidearm, the relief she felt was overwhelming.

She double-checked the safety on the weapon before attempting to tuck it into her pants—then cursing under her breath. She was still wearing her pyjamas, and the waistband was loosely elasticated enough that the weight of the gun made it slip right through. If she hadn't caught it, it would have gone straight past her ass and down the leg of the pants.

As for her underwear, Jane preferred it slightly loose-fitting, which was comfortable most days. The pair she was wearing under her pyjamas right now would just slip down, risking the appearance of a strange, tented bulge at her back that she couldn't cover with her shirt. When she started walking, the sway of her hips might cause the weapon to fall out completely.

There was no way she could pull off a concealed carry of one handgun, let alone two, in her nightwear. The risk she might have taken if it were only her life at stake, she couldn't possibly take with kids in the equation. _Or Kurt._

Could she carry a single gun back towards the cage, hide it behind her back and then stash it somewhere before anyone got close enough to see her? Having all of their weapons in one out-of-the-way spot didn't seem wise. One handgun in a slightly less remote spot wasn't a huge improvement, but she'd take it.

She hesitated for one indecisive moment, then zipped up the bag, put it back into the hatch, then lowered the lid into place.

Her sidearm, she kept with her—holding it close to her thigh, partially concealed behind her leg. Jane's heart pounded as she quietly made her way back through the warehouse, towards the cage. It was a sprawling warehouse filled with crates, pallets, and giant shelving units— the traffickers shipped a variety of different products, as a front for their real business—so it would take her a solid minute to reach it at this slow, stealthy pace.

She kept close to the wall, fearing being observed before she noticed anyone coming, and scanned the area for a secure hiding spot. Once the cage was within sight—Niles was still engrossed in his book, and the kids were either sleeping or pretending to sleep—she decided on a gap between two stacks of crates, scanning the dockets attached to be sure they weren't scheduled for shipping before the raid.

After obscuring the spot with a bit of tarpaulin, she backtracked, headed to the opposite wall, then noisily began to work her way back towards the kids.

"You okay?" Niles called, seeing her coming.

"Are there any more bathrooms down here? I'm looking for tampons."

"Nope, gotta go upstairs if you're searching bathrooms."

Jane groaned and made a beeline for the stairwell, not wanting to waste unnecessary time waiting for the elevator. If Kurt hadn't managed to come up with an excuse to get away from the surveillance system, he'd need her help scouting for potential distractions in the morning.

Not only that, but she just wanted to stay near him. Maybe she was being paranoid, but this whole case had a cataclysmic feel about it. Knowing her husband was safe would ease her mind.


	17. Bathroom Break

**Author's Note:** Next chapter is the big showdown, but for now, an unexpected opportunity to talk to Patterson... Thanks for sticking with me through all this case stuff!

* * *

There was a guard barely out of his teens in the surveillance room with Kurt, attempting to find a compatible wire to replace the damaged one. Pete's presence made it impossible for Kurt to slip away, or to cause more permanent damage to the camera system. He chafed at the inaction, hoping Jane was having better luck downstairs.

Boyd, who'd gone back downstairs after Kurt had successfully convinced him that Patterson's sabotage was caused by rats, had sent a radio message about fifteen minutes ago, disgustedly informing everyone that 'the nanny' was roaming the warehouse looking for tampons. It seemed Jane had come up with a good way to ensure the guards both avoided her _and_ let her wander around.

Something clattered noisily in a nearby room, and Kurt flinched, hoping Patterson's remote-controlled car hadn't knocked something over. "I'll go check that out," he said to Pete, and went to investigate.

Through an open door farther down the hall, he saw Jane chaotically searching through a desk, and relaxed a little. Patterson's car was safe for now.

A couple of guards passed by, glancing in at Jane and moving on hurriedly, as though she had the plague. _What is it with most guys and periods?_

Kurt suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Emma Shaw had made sure to lecture any squeamishness out of him in his mid-teens, when Sarah had started her cycle and begged him to go next door to get supplies from their substitute mother. Even so, he couldn't help but be glad that the typical male aversion to anything menstrual was working in their favour tonight.

He met Jane in the doorway, making sure anyone nearby would hear him in his ex-husband role. "Oh, no, you know I can't stand you when you're PMS-ing."

Jane's lips twitched, and he guessed she was thinking he was lucky he was only _playing_ at being an asshole, not actually speaking as himself. Then she glared at him, assuming her Penny Yates identity again.

"Yeah, and I can't stand you _any_ of the time, PMS-ing or not."

She looked over his shoulder, and Kurt glanced backwards to find Pete leaning out of the surveillance room.

"I'm still learning my way around here. Where are the bathrooms?" Jane asked, swerving around Kurt.

"Uh…there's one just that way," Pete said, gesturing vaguely.

"Which way?" Jane was either playing dumb, or really had no clue where he was trying to direct her. Either way, it provided a good opportunity for Kurt to get away for a while.

"Come on, I'll show ya." Kurt glanced at Pete. "I'll be back in a sec."

Pete grunted and went back to hunting for wires.

Kurt led Jane across the warehouse floor, skirting around crates, and murmured to her, "Loose water pipe just here. I'm hoping I can dislodge it tomorrow, cause some flooding and make it look like an accident."

Keeping her scowl in place for the benefit of the two traffickers who passed them, Jane nodded. "I tried to smuggle our handguns back to our room, but in these clothes, it's impossible. I managed to stash mine near the kids—I'll show you where if I get the chance."

At least that would be a tiny thing in their favour, if things all went to hell. Kurt tried not to look visibly relieved. With the odds stacked against them this highly, they needed every bit of help they could get.

"Are the cameras fixable?" Jane asked.

"Patterson must have managed to fray a wire somehow. I managed to convince them it was chewed through by rats, and that the replacement wire that needs to be connected goes into a different socket. Don't know what that one's actually for, but it's a shape I haven't seen many times, so I'm hoping it'll keep them confused until Adil, the electronics guy, gets back here tomorrow. He'll be able to spot the problem easily, but I was hoping to be able to do something else to the system if I was left alone with it. Haven't managed yet."

Jane shot him a worried glance. "Earlier, I was thinking about taking out the guards down there and getting the kids out now, sending the log book with them. There are only four guards down there."

"That's crazy." Alarm surged through Kurt. "There are probably ten or fifteen of them for each of us stationed up here, and the only way out is through the exits on this floor. They know we're not allowed out of the building, and we don't have bulletproof vests, or enough ammo to hold them off for long. Backup isn't coming until noon tomorrow."

She nodded. "I know. If we could get all of the kids out through the tunnel, I'd say we should chance it anyway. But one of the boys has an injured arm. He's too young to understand he should keep crawling through the pain. He'd give up and have a tantrum for sure."

Kurt swallowed a groan. Having to protect an injured toddler during a raid would make things infinitely more complicated.

"The kids okay otherwise?" he asked softly.

Jane sighed. "As okay as they can be in this situation. I tried to prepare them for what's coming today. I'll let you know more when we're locked in again."

Something flashed in Kurt's peripheral vision, and he turned his head just in time to see a small radio-controlled car backing into the shadows by the wall.

Kurt abruptly dropped into a crouch, pretending to re-tie a shoelace. Jane went an extra step before realising he'd stopped, then returned to his side with a melodramatic sigh for the benefit of anyone close enough to hear. "I don't have all night, you know."

Kurt brushed his hand over her arm as he got to his feet. "Look left. Floor level."

Jane did, and her eyes lit up. After a quick glance around, she raised her hand in a tiny, subtle wave. The car flashed its headlights briefly in reply.

"Is there time for one of us to rendezvous with Patterson? Maybe do a 'one flash for yes, two for no' thing?" she asked Kurt quietly. "We could bring the raid forward, get the kids and the logbook out before it happens."

"But if we do, we might lose Shapiro. He won't be here until tomorrow." There was no way they could risk the head of this trafficking ring going free. "We should try to give Patterson the intel we have, though."

Jane nodded.

Kurt gave Patterson a quick signal to wait, then continued on. "Bathroom's just up here," he said loudly, then lowered his voice. "You head in, leave the door cracked. I'll head back and see if I can pick the car up, or distract anyone who comes near while Patterson drives it to you."

She nodded and brushed her fingers briefly against his, then headed up the hall that led off the main warehouse area, glancing into the rooms to the left and right of her. Reaching the bathroom door, she gave Kurt a silent signal that everything up there was clear.

Kurt meandered back, trying not to look too purposeful to the guards and night-workers within his line of sight. Reaching the shadows where the car was hidden, he leaned against the wall and said, as loudly as he dared, "Jane's in the northwest bathroom on this floor. If I make sure the coast's clear, can you get there?"

The car whirred forward, its movement sounding way too loud and conspicuous to Kurt's ears. It was something they'd have to chance, though. Better that Jane had that conversation with Patterson in private than him trying to do it here, where there were enemies within sight. Any headlight flashes here might catch unwanted eyes.

What followed was a tense couple of minutes of Kurt pretending to search boxes on shelves—he could say he was looking for wires or menstrual products, if questioned—and Patterson navigating into different cover points every time he tapped his foot. Since the shelving units' bottom shelves were a few inches off the ground, Patterson could hide the car under them, moving with him as he 'searched'.

It was a huge relief when the car veered around the corner into the bathroom hallway, and out of sight. Jane would have to take it from here.

He turned around, and almost crashed into Pete and two other guards, who were all looking at him suspiciously.

"Hey. What's up? You found a wire yet?" he asked Pete, hoping none of them could tell how nervous he was. Had they seen the car?

"No. Came to find you, since you've been gone a while. Where's the nanny?"

"In the bathroom. She sent me to carry on hunting for tampons or whatever. Usually I'd say she can find her own, but I really want her to consider taking me back, so…you know how it is." He gave them a hopeful look. "There has to be something around here, right? You must have at least one other woman working here?"

Pete shook his head. "You know what women are like with kids, man. Way too sentimental for our line of work. Your ex is the first one we've dared approach."

"Oh, great, that means I'm screwed. Unless…" He feigned a lightbulb moment. "Hey, you got a big pair of scissors? Maybe we can cut one of the kids' diapers down to size or something."

He steered them back down towards the elevator, as far away from Jane and the car as possible, and hoped like hell that something came of his wife's rendezvous with Patterson.

* * *

Jane locked the door behind the remote-controlled car, sighing with relief. At least no one was likely to disturb her for a good few minutes now she was in here.

She crouched on the floor, trying not to shudder at the disgusting state of the tiles in this bathroom, and looked into the camera mounted on the tiny vehicle. Speaking quietly, she said, "One flash for yes, two for no, okay? Am I talking to Patterson?"

The car flashed its headlights once, and Jane smiled. It was amazing how much the contact with outside allies could raise her spirits on a mission like this.

"I'm so glad you guys have eyes inside now. Things here are way more complicated than we first thought. Flash at me if I tell you anything you already know…" She gave Patterson as much information as she could about the kids, the log book, Kurt's deception with the cameras, then their plans for the morning, wishing Patterson could reply in more than yes-or-no flashes.

Once she'd relayed everything she could think of, she said, "The guy who'll be looking at the surveillance system tomorrow is called Adil. Sorry, I don't have a last name. Is he on the list of people we've managed to identify coming and going from this place?"

A few moments later, Patterson flashed, _Yes._

Jane crossed her fingers for luck, knowing she was being superstitious, but not caring. "Do you know where he lives? Any way you guys can arrest him, or otherwise delay him from coming into work until after the raid?"

 _Yes._

Jane blew out a relieved breath. "Thank you. If we can keep the cameras off all morning, it will really help. Is the raid still scheduled for noon?"

 _Yes._

"Things are gonna be tough. Kurt will probably be upstairs, hopefully with Shapiro, if we can manage to lure him away so I can grab his book. If I can, I'll start neutralising guards with stealth at about eleven forty-five, and get as many kids out as I can. When the raid starts, I'll make my stand in the basement, and I'll have at least one of the kids with me. Kurt will try to retreat downstairs when you break in, but the sooner you guys can come back us up, the better."

Jane rubbed her aching temple, trying to think of anything she'd missed. Nothing sprang to mind, so she said, "Tell Avery I love her, okay? If Kurt and I don't make it out of this…take care of her."

 _Yes._

Jane swallowed hard, wondering if this would be the last contact she ever had with her team. "It makes me feel so much better knowing you guys are out there waiting to help. This has to be one of the worst cases I've ever worked." She shook her head. "Okay, I should get back out there before they get suspicious. Wish us luck."

The car headlights blinked on and off several times, which Jane assumed was Patterson's equivalent of 'good luck'. She smiled, but sobered quickly.

"And tell the team to be careful. These assholes are not playing around."

As the car flashed another 'yes', there was a knock on the door. "Hey, Penny," Kurt called through the door, "Couldn't find you any tampons, but I got the next-best thing!"

"Sanitary pads?" Jane called back, making sure Patterson was mostly out of view behind the basin pedestal before she went to the door and cracked it open.

Kurt glanced down the hall, checking they were unobserved, before grinning and passing her a vaguely pad-shaped object. "Nope! But I improvised with one of the diapers from downstairs."

Jane stared down at the cut-down diaper in her hands and fought the urge to burst into uncontrollable laughter. "You know this is barely better than just using toilet paper, right?" she whispered to him, laughing under her breath.

"Yeah, but _they_ don't know that." Kurt inclined his head towards the warehouse floor. "You need more time with Patterson?"

She shook her head, and loudly said, "Guess it'll have to do."

"I'll wait here," Kurt said, signalling that he could hear someone approaching.

Jane shut the door in his face, and turned to show the snipped-up diaper to Patterson. "Can you believe this?" She rolled the thing up in toilet paper and stuffed it into the trashcan, making sure to cover it with paper towels. Then she flushed the toilet and gave the car a small wave. "See you tomorrow. Don't let them see you, okay?"

The car flashed its headlights.

Jane put on her Penny Yates face and pulled open the bathroom door, making sure to leave it open enough for Patterson to navigate the car out of there.

"All set?" Kurt asked.

"Don't get too smug," she told him. "Just because you helped me out doesn't mean we're going on that date."

"Awww, come on, Penny!"

They bickered all the way back to the surveillance room, which was now empty. Kurt shot Jane an urgent glance and made a beeline for the security system, while Jane leaned in the doorway, still telling her 'ex-husband' how useless she thought he was, keeping watch for enemies.

When Pete reappeared, five minutes later, Kurt had plugged a multitude of wires into incorrect sockets. Jane guessed that was as much as they could get away with, since anything more irreversible would be seen as sabotage, not an inept attempt to fix things.

"Boyd says that if you found what you were looking for, get your asses downstairs so he can lock you back in," Pete said, looking bored.

"Oh, joy," Jane said sourly. "A few more hours locked up with my ex."

* * *

Once they were locked back in, Jane joined Kurt on his cot, snuggling up in his embrace as she filled him in on what she'd asked of Patterson, and the details of what she'd told the kids. "I told them my name is Lauren, so if for some reason you have to go in instead of me, use that."

Kurt nodded, stroking her hair. "No matter what happens tomorrow, just remember that I love you," he told her.

Jane tightened her arms around him. "I love you, too." She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to dispel her anxiety about the coming day. "We've got this, right?"

"Yeah. We're gonna be fine."

Jane could tell her husband was on edge, just as she was, but didn't have the heart to call him on it. They'd made their way out of nearly impossible situations before, though rarely without injury.

 _Just let Kurt and the kids survive_ , she thought, unsure whether she was talking to God, the universe, or just herself. _It doesn't matter what happens to me, as long as they make it out._


End file.
